Where is the 'Physical' in Physical Education?

There has always been controversy regarding the level of desirable physical activity in Physical Education and Games lessons.  It goes to the core of what PE is supposed to be. Is it education of the physical - or through the physical?  It is a fundamental issue, though not one often seen on the agenda of PE department meetings.  Curiously.

Even the Government feels a need to contribute to the debate, expressing a view that there should be greater physical endeavour in primary PE lessons, in order to improve fitness levels. 

But is the point of PE and Games to fulfil the role of the hamster wheel or the prison exercise yard in existing only to create physiological demand?  The idea of red faced children, hot and sweaty but learning little is one that goes back to the Drill Sergeant of the Victorian era. 

The enemy of "continuous physical activity" is teacher talk.  Recent research shows that PE teachers and games coaches talk for approximately two thirds of most sessions, whilst participants are entirely or largely  inactive.  Whether or not pupils are listening is another issue.  This has its root in a fashionable obsession with technique. PE teachers have adopted a holy grail of technical excellence and have not been diverted from this obsession by the daily evidence that mixed ability classes have very limited success in mastering complex games skills.  Nor that the world of elite sport daily demonstrates such a range of skills in successful performance to make the concept of a single route to technical excellence largely redundant.  It is only necessary to have a quick look at Big Bash or IPL to see that obsession with the high left elbow is a technicality from another era.  Or to watch Quade Cooper to be convinced that Don Rutherford's RFU coaching videos are no longer relevant.

So, what is the compromise? What is the desirable balance between instruction and activity?  And how intensive should that activity be?  This is a debate which might appear on all meeting agendas, and with which schools might constantly experiment. To establish what they believe to be best practice. Sadly, those meetings tend to be dominated by administrative issues such as the time the bus leaves, who is pumping the ball up and who is laundering the team shirts.  Urgent, but not so important.

Brave - and innovative to the point of unique - would be the school that used injured players to time the amount of activity and the level of teacher talk in its sessions.  And used that information to define best practice, and issue recommendations to inexperienced teachers and non-specialist coaches within the school.  Or who used readily available heart rate monitoring to establish the range and average heart rates of pupils in games sessions to discover whether these lessons actually surpass the thresholds which would enable them contribute to raising fitness levels.  Is this not the real work of the Director of Sport?  Quality controlling session delivery and impact?

So here's a challenge to be going on with.  How about a target of having all pupils physically active for at least half of every session?  Not listening to a teacher, stood in a queue for an attempt at a skill, or engaged in meaningless, low quality stretching.  And here's another.  How about a target, measured by widely available cheap technology, of an average heart rate of 120 beats per minute for pupils in games coaching sessions.  Both are far more challenging targets than they first appear.

How good is good?