http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8568111.stm

I wonder how much exercise he gets

And it's worth pointing out that you can get all the exercise recommended and still be unhealthy because of your diet, which is the start of the problem for many in the first place (like me)...

We used to run bleep tests. Bleep test, 2 hospital runs, then bleep test was the first 4 weeks of every year's PE lessons. Oh that was fun...

For many years I've thought that kids should do more exercise at school. As a rough suggestion 09:00-15:00 schoolwork followed by 15:00-17:00 games each day could have a few benefits. A better fit to working hours of parents, possibly reducing time required for after school care or extra commuting (could be shifted to avoid congestion), more focus in the day on teamwork, less energy in the evenings to hang around petrol stations, less complaining of nothing to do followed by a drop in vandalism and anti-social behaviour. Earlier to sleep each night so better rested for the next day, ad infinitum.

There has to some flexibility of course, music, arts and other activities must be recognised.

I'm sure some of you have some drawbacks, so let's hear them.


I remember doing the bleep test at school, but I see a drawback. The least fit get knocked out first and so sit on their arses, for what could be some time until the fittest have also reached their limit. Depends on the teacher of course but has the same prospect for improvement as a bad player at winner stays on pool if they can't be occupied in the meantime.

I have no idea what a bleep test is, but this makes it sound ghastly.

Essesntially it's shuttle running to a gradually increasing set pace. You run a set distance and aim to reach the far line at the sound of the beep (played from a CD/tape player or the like). You then return to the other line for the next beep. And then head back the other way for the one after... Gradually the pace increases, and if you miss two consecutive beeps you stop. They're grouped into levels of similar speed, and you record how long you last.

The hospital run was a through-town cross country run, so called because it passed 'round the edge of the hospital car park. 2 and a bit miles, but because of where the start line was it nearly always meant you were late to lunch that day!

For some reason I think the iPod has a bleep test app either built-in or available.

I would have done very badly in that due to:
• disinterest in participating in sport
• asthma, which wasn’t too good when I was at school

There are a number of problems. First is the sale of school playing fields for housing developments so fewer playing fields to start with and also not enough PE teachers to do that. If they had longer breaks in the day with equipment handed out for kids to play games during breaks that might help. When I was at school the number of options during the winter was so bad that we skived a lot. I hated cross country running but that was the only option during the winter.

I think this is generally a bad thing, in 99.99% of cases. However my school had a huuuuuuuuge (we're talking big enough for ~12 rugby pitches in a school with an attendance of 800+sixth form) on the offsite playing fields, 75% of which was unusable. They wanted to sell something in the region of 5-10% to gain funding to level the rest of the site, improve access, fix the completely dilapidated changing facilities, move the gym off-site, and allow access to local residents, build a hockey pitch so the school no longer had to rent, move the cricket pitch to this off-site location as it was causing problems being on the main site, ...

It seemed perfectly reasonable, and made so much sense, but the local residents kept blocking the planning permission. I think the changing facilities have now been done, but obv. to the minimum standard, and there's no gym there. Everything else, is as far as I'm aware, unchanged.

Yes but the funding is not an acceptable excuse. I can accept if they have too much playing fields that they can transfer some to the council to turn into local parks. The suggestions that you mentioned were sensible but I expect that funding was a problem. If they were able to open the facilities to the public it would make a huge difference to the ability to find them.

I was routinely the best beep test performer in my class at school.

Now I'd be absolutely hopeless.

I thought the P.E "lessons" were really good at school. There would be four teachers, usually doing four different activities and we would be able to choose which one we wanted to do.

I always chose rugby or football. Most of the girls and guys who were scared of the wet/cold muddy weather chose trampolining. In the summer I would choose cricket or tennis. I HATE athletics!

It’s ghastly. It just sounds like another excuse for PE teachers to further humiliate and demoralise.

Let the kids who enjoy and want to do sport do sport, and let the rest opt out.

Now I hated PE at school, being rather rounded, but still think it's important and should be compulsary.

Other half, who is a primary school teacher, says that they will get a directive to do X more hours of PE a week. There seems to be directives every so often when an issue is raised to up the hours for this subject. The problem being that unlike other subjects, which can be combined (sometimes creatively) so that the right number of hours per week for each subject is covered, PE is harder to do this with. It’s essentially a large hole in the school day. More PE = less time for anything else. There has to be a point where the parents need to do this kind of thing. Walk the feeble little brat to school, not put it in a 4X4.

When the olympics roll round, there will be a push for more games and PE. When we start looking rubbish at science,t here will be a requirement for more hours of science done, etc..

Right now, there seems to be no requirements for humanities or arts. If you can’t mix them in with the core subjects (maths, science, english, more maths, yet more maths), then they don’t get taught. I am very concerned that these tabloid headlines are causing us to give primary school children a very poorly balanced foundation for secondary school education.

When the government changes this year, all this will be thrown out and a new set of rules and directives will come in, causing further disruption.