Is there enough P in PE ?

When PT was first introduced into schools, its purpose was clear and unequivocal.  It was to provide exercise in order to improve health.  To combat diseases prevalent in poverty, and to raise standards of fitness, often primarily for military service.  It might have been a limited programme, with some fairly uninspiring content and delivery mechanisms - but its rationale was clear.  Exercise improves health.  And that's a good thing.

The industry of Physical Education, however, complicated this issue.  It added other success criteria, including acquiring sports skills and developing personal qualities.  All of these impacted upon delivery.  Broadly, they led to more teacher talk, and breaks in physical activity for explanations.  “Teaching Points” defined lesson quality.  Lesson plans established a prescription, which, if accurately administered, fostered more skillful performance.

The arms race led to an insatiable drive for facility development, providing opportunities for a wider programme, in which indoor games came to dominate. Learning games skills, rules and protocols became a regular focus of PE lessons. 

An unintended consequence was to reduce the physical demand of many lessons.  Cognitive learning trumped breathlessness in the game of defeating the inspector.  Teacher talk became the framework for all the boxes on the lesson plan.  There could be no learning without instruction.  A drive to include IT within lessons did little to improve activity levels.  Nor did enthusiasm for small whiteboards and marker pens.  These lessons may have met other laudable objectives, but maybe they achieved this by compromising physical intensity.  In many classes, heart rates rarely exceed 100 bpm. 

Perhaps the new inspection framework with its focus on pupil outcomes, ahead of teacher inputs may lead to greater exertion.  But not all teachers will give up this tight control willingly.

There is a substantial number of children whose only physical activity is undertaken in curriculum PE.  This might be their only opportunity to learn the joy of hard, physical work.  Driving the body to new levels of intensity to be rewarded with a unique form of personal satisfaction.  How else is this unique delayed gratification to be experienced?

There is a danger that the “Education” dominates the subject to the exclusion of the “Physical”.  Sport may not be for all, but exercise and health can be.  But only if children can learn the value of intensive exercise, and the rewards it brings both in terms of short term, and medium-term health benefit.  A major part of learning about healthy, active lifestyles must be to experience physical effort and what it feels like - during and afterwards.  Learning determination and persistence require temptations to desist.  Without the right level of physical challenge, willpower is neither demanded nor improved.  And research is quite clear - enhanced willpower predicts success in life, is transferable between domains, and can be developed. 

If developing health and fitness became a clearer focus for PE lessons, maybe the education really could be about the physical.  Rather than about games skills.

So, maybe the Victorians were on to something. Maybe a restoration of the physical in Physical Education really could have an impact on developing determination, and improving health and fitness.  The title of the subject suggests that the balance between the P and the E are equal: maybe it's time to restore that.