The more PE, the less exercise children do outside school

Published on Wednesday 6 May 2009 22:02

PROVIDING children with more playgrounds, sports facilities and PE time in schools does not necessarily make them more active, scientists have found.

Children who are timetabled to do more weekly exercise at school compensate by doing less at home, according to the research.

The findings, to be presented today at the European Congress on Obesity, also show that those who do less PE make up for it by being more active at home.

"These findings have implications for anti-obesity policies because they challenge the assumption that creating more opportunity for children to be active – by providing more play-grounds, sports facilities and more PE time in schools – will mean more physical activity," said Alissa Frmeaux, one of the researchers.

"If health strategists want to alter the physical activity of children, it is important that they first understand what controls it."

Researchers at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth studied 206 children aged 7-11 from three primary schools that offered differing timetables for PE. Children attending one school got an average of 9.2 hours a week of scheduled PE, compared to 2.4 and 1.7 hours at the other schools.

The pupils who took part in the experiment wore accelerometers – gadgets which record time and duration as well as intensity of activity – all day, every day for one week over the course of four consecutive terms.

The researchers concluded that although the children attending the school where PE featured highest on the curriculum did 40 per cent more activity during school hours than the other children, their total weekly activity was no different from the others.

This led researchers to suggest that environmental factors do not drive physical activity levels in children, but a form of central control in the brain that works in a similar way to appetite.

Ms Frmeaux said: "There is plenty of evidence that the opportunities for children to be active have changed over recent years, but we cannot find the evidence that more opportunity means more activity."

Tam Fry, a board member of the National Obesity Forum, said that although he agreed with the findings in principle, they did not mean parents and teachers should stop encouraging children to be active.

"There's no point in sitting on our hands and thinking we are wasting our time by trying to get children to run about. I don't think we can take our eye off the ball. We still need to worry about how to get children to exercise."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "We are committed to the delivery of two hours of PE each week for pupils and, under Curriculum for Excellence, all local authorities are working towards achieving two hours of PE.

"However, PE is only part of the solution and we need to get young people to be more active on the whole."