Healthy body, healthy mind: the benefits of exercise on learning and wellbeing have been known for years. Yet when it comes to our education system, PE is still squeezed out of the timetable - not just by the three core subjects of English, maths and science, but by everything else, too.

But a report published in December issued a clarion call for a change to PE’s standing in the school timetable. The bold proposal to make physical education a core subject was made in the Lords select committee report A national plan for sport, health and wellbeing, in which the committee suggested that PE should have the same weight as English, maths and science on the curriculum.

“We want to see PE made a core subject with greater emphasis on physical literacy and making PE and school sport a fun, enjoyable and inclusive experience,” the report said.

It also contained some big asks of the government to boost engagement in sport, including a new minister for sport and wellbeing, and calls for the UK to adopt a New Zealand-style tax relief for its sports clubs.

But with so much squeezed on to the curriculum already, and with the added pressure of “catch-up” to mitigate the learning loss caused by the pandemic, you might wonder why schools - already overburdened as a lever for all societal needs - should be the conduit for change to a nation’s lifestyle habits? Where do parents fit in? What about community groups? 

For the report authors, the reasons for more focus on physical activity are clear: we need to get fitter. Specifically, there are “high levels of inactivity” in the adult population, particularly among “women, ethnic minorities, disabled people…and people from less affluent backgrounds” and they stress that this needs tackling urgently.

And schools, they argue, are the place where “attitudes towards physical activity…track into adulthood”, and so improving school sport will ensure that the next generation of young people are equipped with “the skills, motivation and confidence to become active adults”.

Are schools really not doing their bit when it comes to PE, though? And if not, how realistic is it that any meaningful and manageable increase in physical activity in schools will be possible? 

Citing data from Active Lives, an annual survey backed by Sport England, the Lords report states that 2.3 million children in England - almost a third (31.3 per cent) of the child population - are doing less than 30 minutes of activity a day. It also found that girls and children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds are the most likely to have lower activity levels.

That this has consequences is clear. A Tes feature last year detailed the growing trend of obese children in both Reception and Year 6 - a trend that has only got worse over the pandemic.

That worsening, according to the Lords report, was partly caused by sports clubs closing and training being shut down because of social distancing measures.

Yet the blame cannot be laid squarely at the pandemic for this situation. Yes, it made things a lot worse - as we shall see - but PE was already a subject that was slowly slipping off the radar in many schools.

“Despite being a foundation subject, and statutory until 16, PE still doesn’t always get the time or resources it needs,” says Sue Wilkinson, the CEO of the Association for Physical Education (AFPE), who provided oral evidence for the Lords report.

Meanwhile, Kevin Ford, headteacher of Great Marlow School in Buckinghamshire and a headteacher ambassador for the Youth Sport Trust, says that PE has lost out as schools have been squeezed by exams and external pressures.

“Time for PE has been eroded in secondary and primary schools due to the focus on the core curriculum subjects,” he explains. “The introduction of the EBacc [English Baccalaureate] and Progress 8 has meant some secondary schools have significantly eroded the amount of PE and sport time that students get.”

This was a point made to the Lords in hearings with teachers, too, and they clearly acknowledged it by outlining in their report that, when it comes to timetable allocation, other subjects are pushed to the front of the queue and PE finds itself at the back of the line, last to be picked.

The report claimed that the committee had “heard that PE and school sport do not receive the recognition that they deserve and that the low value placed on PE [had resulted] in lesson times being reduced.”

The Covid pandemic’s effect on PE

If this was the view of PE before the pandemic, then it is no surprise that when lockdown hit and teachers grappled with the reality of teaching PE remotely, the subject slipped by the wayside - as Ofsted reported in its review of research where it looked at learning loss in the pandemic.

“Teaching of some parts of the curriculum was also understandably hindered by lockdown restrictions…because students were unable to access equipment, learning in more practical subjects was disrupted, for instance in PE, music, science, and design and technology,” the Ofsted review found.

The huge interest in Joe Wicks’ online PE sessions may have helped mitigate some of this, but it’s not the same as properly structured PE lessons run by trained teachers - many of whom were no doubt itching to get their students back in school and get them moving again.

But those hopes met the blunt reality of the need to start thinking about catch-up when schools returned, with Ford noting that pupils were often removed from PE lessons for “extra support lessons and intervention”, with after-school clubs also suffering as a result.

“With the tutoring push as part of the catch-up plan, PE and other subject teachers who delivered after-school clubs are now being paid to do catch-up and many have stopped delivering their voluntary clubs,” he explains.

Ofsted also picked up on this problem in its review, saying that “practical aspects of subjects such as PE and music were sometimes not being taught” even when schools returned, and that there was, instead, an “increased focus on English and maths teaching”.

The select committee also heard about this problem from primary PE teacher Tom Feighan, who told a similar tale: “Pupils get two hours a week for PE lessons and very often even that gets taken away if they need to do extra maths or because the hall is being used.”

For the Lords, the solution to all this is clear: make PE a core curriculum subject and consequently, via the threat of accountability, force schools into improving their physical education provision.

Specifically, they say: “The Department for Education must establish expected standards for the delivery of PE and school sport. The quality and delivery of PE and school sport must be assessed during Ofsted inspections of schools.”

Unsurprisingly, this idea was met with enthusiasm by those in the PE world, with Wilkinson at the AFPE saying this change in status is what the subject deserves. “PE needs to be prioritised and front-and-centre in every school,” she says.

Ford is equally effusive about the plan, saying: “Absolutely yes, PE should be a core subject.”

It’s a view echoed by Jo Harris, emeritus professor at Loughborough University, who herself has previously written a paper entitled The case for physical education becoming a core subject in the National Curriculum.

“Making PE a core subject would result in it being given the attention it deserves with respect to increased status, time and resources,” she tells Tes.

“This would lead to PE being able to properly demonstrate its contribution to children and young people’s holistic health and wellbeing, improved public health, and to enhanced learning across all subjects.”

Of course, it’s no surprise that PE teachers, academics and associations are in favour of the plans.

For others, though, the idea of PE embedded across the curriculum is one that they probably see being accompanied by some big hurdles that would need to be cleared.

Perhaps the most obvious of these is time.

“If we make PE a core subject, then the rest of the curriculum will need to be considered. What else will change to give PE that extra weighting?” asks Vanessa King, a PE consultant who previously lectured at the University of Portsmouth in the school of sport, health and exercise science.

She notes that the primary curriculum is already “oversaturated” and that it is a “struggle” to teach all the content necessary, so fitting in more hours of compulsory PE each week would be a tough ask.

Garret Fay, CEO of Insignis Academy Trust and a lead headteacher ambassador at the Youth Sport Trust, also says he would be concerned that “the current curriculum expectation is very difficult to fit into the timetable as it is”.

King also makes the point that more time for PE would also have to be considered within the context of different settings.

“The problem [of delivering the whole of the existing curriculum] is particularly the case where there may be greater numbers of vulnerable children, potentially in deprived areas, where children may need additional time to reinforce and consolidate their learning,” says King.

Fay makes this point, too. “Pupils on augmented timetables in PRUs [pupil referral units], they already don’t have the time to do sport,” he says.

Despite these concerns, the Lords did not provide any suggestions on what could make way in the curriculum for this new core PE requirement.

However, headteachers that Tes spoke to said they could see ways to make it work - in part by borrowing an idea from former education recovery tsar Sir Kevan Collins and extending the school day.

“I would put an hour on the end of every school day, led by coaches, which would be devoted to sport and the arts,” says Simon Botten, headteacher of Blackhorse Primary School in Bristol.

This may seem a bold idea, but for Botten, the price of not acting is now too high: “There has been a massive decline in children’s physical fitness over the past two years - especially vulnerable children - so we need to be more proactive about this.”

‘If we make PE a core subject, then the rest of the curriculum will need to be considered. What else will change to give PE that extra weighting?’

Daniel Woodrow, headteacher of St Gregory CEVC Primary School in Suffolk, is a keen runner who ran the virtual London marathon last year and invited the whole school to run the last mile with him around the school playing field. He says that he could see ways to make PE work as a core subject, too.

“The simplest way to incorporate more PE into the curriculum is to stagger activity from when the pupils arrive until they leave,” he says.

“For example, you could begin with the whole school taking part in a 10-minute ‘wake and shake’-style activity first thing in their classroom or on the playground, then later a 15-minute daily mile, and then three PE lessons a week.”

For those still sceptical, though, proof that more time for PE can be found in the timetable can be found north of the border, where a change in policy in 2011 saw Scottish schools required to commit to a minimum number of hours of PE per week in both primary and secondary by 2014.

Specifically, Scottish pupils now receive two hours of PE a week at primary, and then in secondary school they are all allocated 100 minutes a week. Compliance has been near-universal, with 99 per cent of schools meeting the obligation in 2019.

Of course, 100 minutes is less than, say, the two hours that Feighan says he has timetabled at his schools - but the key point is that, because these minutes must be delivered, they can’t be scrapped to make time for other subjects.

This is something that Sharon McLellan, headteacher of Laurieknowe Primary School in Dumfries, and education and learning director at Dumfries and Galloway Council, says has been key as before this, PE provision was “ad hoc” and “inconsistent” - but the new policy forced a change in attitude.

“When the policy came in, it shone a spotlight on physical education,” she says. “When we couldn’t take that time away, it showed us that those pupils who were less academic and excelled at PE could really enjoy school.”

McLellan describes how “they found the time” to make everything fit, sometimes averaging the hours out over weeks, and weaving PE into the school day using activities such as the daily mile - similar to what Woodrow outlines.

She says this doesn’t mean it is easy but that it shows it can be made to work - especially if enforced from on high. 

So while the time hurdle is notable, it does not appear to be insurmountable.

The primary PE stumbling block 

Even so, if we return to our hypothetical hurdles, another one is still in our way: capacity. In short, are there enough PE teachers already trained and ready to take on more hours of teaching?

Well, for secondary schools, yes - we would win a gold medal for the number of PE teachers currently in the secondary school workforce, as the National Foundation for Educational Research’s lead economist, Jack Worth, outlines.

“PE has historically always recruited up to and over its target,” he explains. “PE also has a very good track record of retaining teachers.”

Indeed, the latest DfE report on teacher retention shows that PE has the lowest wastage rate (the number of teachers that leave the profession) of all subjects.

What’s more, the demand from new PE teachers is so high that it remains the only secondary subject for which the number allowed on to ITT courses must be limited.

“All the others were relaxed, but it remains in place for PE,” says Worth. “If PE supply needed to increase, it would be no problem at all to fill the need - lifting the cap would be the first move.”

However, at primary, things are different. Teachers are not trained in any one subject but instead cover the entire spectrum of the curriculum - which, if we were to make PE a core subject, could cause problems.

Indeed, the Lords report touched on this by describing the ITT provision for primary PE as “inadequate” and expressing disappointment that trainee teachers receive “just a few hours” of training for this subject.

Ford agrees and says this lack of training would prevent schools from making a success of the move to make PE a core subject. “The lack of training in primary means that it’s a challenge to deliver what is needed to younger children,” he explains.

“We need primary teachers who are happy to deliver PE lessons, but this means improving what teachers receive in teacher training,” he says.

‘The lack of PE training for primary teachers means that it’s a challenge to deliver what is needed to younger children’

The experts in the Lords report agree, calling for PE to be given “adequate time” on primary ITT courses and for primary trainees to be “assessed…on their understanding of physical literacy”.

What’s more, the importance of better physical education CPD is not just limited to primary schools. The Lords report heard from Simon Roadley, a teacher in a SEND school in Leicester, who said he believes more training is needed for PE teachers when it comes to working with children with special educational needs and disabilities.

“Teacher training is crucial for ensuring that the delivery of PE can be inclusive, with PE teachers needing the confidence to adjust lessons to facilitate the participation of all students, including students with special educational needs and disabilities,” Roadley said at the hearing.

This is something that Anthony Maher, director of research and professor of special educational needs, disability and inclusion at the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University - and who has written extensively on the topic of PE and SEND - agrees with.

“[Although most teachers have] positive attitudes and are committed to teaching pupils with SEND…they lack the knowledge, skills, experience and confidence to provide meaningful educational experiences,” he explains.

As such, he says, “initial teacher education and continuing professional development” could help address these problems.

These concerns are also echoed by Alison Willett, education director at the National Association for Special Educational Needs (Nasen). “It is crucial that all teaching staff are confident and supported in [inclusive teaching] through ongoing effective professional development activities,” she says.

However, Maher cautions that seeing more CPD and more ITT training as a “silver bullet” was misleading - and that wider issues remain.

“Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, now more than ever, there needs to be much greater investment in SEND in schools and this needs to find its way to PE,” he says.

“There are also significant issues with the resourcing of PE - whether that be the support of teaching assistants and/or use of specialist equipment - that hinder a PE teacher’s ability provide meaningful experiences of PE to pupils with SEND.”

What’s more, even if this was overcome and more teachers felt confident teaching PE to students with SEND as part of a core curriculum requirement in mainstream schools, there are still those who have reservations about the move.

One leader who spoke to Tes anonymously shared how they would worry about the impact this had on pupils and that many may find it “overwhelming”, adding: “Raising the profile of PE will create anxiety for students who find PE overwhelming for sensory reasons and struggle with teamwork.”

Given this, they say it would have to be the case that there was an “opt out” for these students built into the system, and point out that the focus should be on those who don’t find PE stressful.

“There could be some other way to encourage physical wellbeing of the masses without impacting on the mental wellbeing of those who would find this a challenge,” they add.

‘PE teachers need the confidence to adjust lessons to facilitate the participation of all students, including those with special educational needs and disabilities’

This view isn’t shared by Willett, though, who says that pupils with special educational needs are “not a homogenous group” and “vary such a lot”.

“It’s true that for some children it might be more difficult, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do it - we must modify and adapt,” she says.

Helen Ralston, headteacher of The Rise School in Feltham, London - an all-through SEND provision school - certainly understands this need to modify and adapt.

Ralston says that, although she acknowledges that PE can cause challenges for children with SEND, the overall benefits mean it is always worth making it available to them as often as possible.

“Our learners get a tremendous lot out of their PE lessons,” she says. “We know that for students with SEND, PE can sometimes be a challenge - but the rewards are worth the efforts.”

As a consequence, Ralston already treats PE as if it were a core subject for her young people, and delivers a “curriculum built around the idea a healthy mind lives inside a healthy body”.

Ralston stresses that this doesn’t mean simply doing “more PE”, but instead tailoring PE to meet the needs of the students.

“We allocate five 40-minute lessons per week dedicated to physical activity - two of those are PE lessons, but we also have activities like swimming and yoga,” she explains.

Ralston also makes the point that by offering more PE in the gym and on the field, her students are learning more when they’re in the classroom.

“Learning can only happen if you have the attention of the learners, and so by giving our pupils more PE, it has improved concentration, and as a consequence, academic learning in the classroom improves.”

Healthy body, healthy mind

The idea of linking more PE to better academic outcomes may sound bold, but several research studies have shown this link. Harris says that it is time education recognised this.

“Some still see PE as simply an opportunity to let off steam and provide a break from learning,” she says. “However, the notion of separating the mind and body is dated and flawed, as the mind and body are inextricably linked.”

For example, in 2015, the University of Texas at Austin published a paper entitled Active education: growing evidence on physical activity and academic performance, which reviewed 39 separate studies, was unanimous in its findings.

“Physical activity can have both immediate and long-term benefits on academic performance,” the paper said. “Almost immediately after engaging in physical activity, children are better able to concentrate on classroom tasks, which can enhance learning.”

Calls to get children active to improve their concentration and learning have also been made by the World Health Organization in a review on physical activity and academic achievement published in August 2020.

This umbrella review collated evidence from a set of 41 systematic reviews and meta-analyses of how physical activity affects academic achievement worldwide. Again, the results were clear: “[Repeated] physical activity showed a medium positive effect on academic achievement…with the most benefit gained from longitudinal programmes incorporating aerobic exercise.”

For PE advocates, all this will come as no surprise. For example, Ford says that his school has tracked the academic performance of between 100 and 150 pupils on its rowing programme for the past five years - and there is a notable correlation between their academic progress and that of non-rowers.

“When you analyse the rowers compared with the rest of the school, they outperform in terms of progress,” explains Ford. “We’ve looked at their academic achievement at key stages 2, 3 and 4, and the rowers make more progress than any other group in the school.”

This is certainly compelling and could help convince even the most anti-sport teacher - or indeed parent - of the merits of more PE in the timetable, if it could also mean pupils getting better at other subjects such as maths, physics, geography or French.

Assessment: the final hurdle

So, we’ve accounted for time and teachers, and discovered there could be academic benefits of more PE, too. There’s still one final hurdle, though: assessment.

After all, becoming a core subject would mean that PE would have to be scrutinised by Ofsted, and more assessment would need to take place - so, what would that look like? Would it be how long it takes to run a mile, or how many press-ups you can do?

Definitely not, says Fay. “Running a mile in eight minutes [for example] is a tick-box exercise - it doesn’t show anything about the sporting abilities of that child,” he says.

Wilkinson agrees and says that it would be an “unhelpful” way to measure success in PE. Instead, she says that participation should form the assessment instead.

“If you have 10 per cent of children attend 100 per cent of the clubs, then this is a measurement of engagement - we should be aiming for 100 per cent participation from all children,” she says.

For Ralston, it could be that Ofsted looks at how learners respond to what is on offer, rather than traditional assessments.

“Designing good assessment is matching it to the purpose: ultimately our PE is about developing healthy habits now to take into adulthood,” she says. “[As such] the framework should be based on engagement, an assessment on how you’re helping students build healthy habits.”

Meanwhile, Fay says that we could look to pre-existing assessment metrics for PE as a basis for any future models on a cross-school level.

“Both the GCSE PE specification and the early years framework profiles can give us an indication of how you can assess student performance in PE,” he says.

More fundamentally, Harris says that the push to improve PE through assessment could even be linked on a government level to see if it reduces the burden on the NHS - an argument she has outlined in her research paper.

“High-quality physical education in schools can also reduce the health burden of physical inactivity and contribute to the economic prosperity of the country,” she wrote in that paper.

This is no small point - indeed, it was one of the key points that the Lords used for its call to boost PE in schools, as it would ensure the next generation of young people is equipped with “the skills, motivation, and confidence to become active adults”.

A problem requiring many solutions

So the big question, then, is: will anything happen to enact this idea?

Tes asked the DfE what it made of the report and whether it would be acting on the recommendations. A spokesperson said that a formal response would be issued in due course.

“The department is reviewing the committee’s report and will be responding to the recommendations as part of the government’s response,” they said. “The recommendations reflect our areas of focus through the cross-government School Sport and Activity Action Plan, which we will be publishing an update to next year.”

So, with the ball in the DfE’s court, it seems we may have to wait a little while as to if and how the Lords report is taken forward.

Of course, none of the above is to suggest that the societal issues of inactivity and pressure on the NHS are things that schools can solve on their own through more PE lessons and extracurricular clubs alone.

The Lords did recognise this in their report with one recommendation that a newly appointed minister for sport, health and wellbeing should be tasked with finding ways to help “inspire parents to be active with their children outside of school” and that there should be a statutory requirement for local authorities to “provide and maintain adequate facilities for sport and physical activity”.

Longer breaktimes could also be an effective way to give children more of their own time to move around while at school. This has been called for several times, with many lamenting the shortening of breaktimes due to curriculum pressures - and a report this week said it could improve mental health, too.

However, given the scale of the problem as the Lords see it, it could well be that schools are asked to find more time for PE and help with yet another major part of society.

There would be plenty of hurdles to clear were this the case but it seems clear that for many in the education sector, making PE a core curriculum subject would be an activity worth undertaking - one that benefits not just pupils now, but the country long into the future, too.