From timesonline.co.uk:

“Highly competitive team sports in school discourage many children from taking part in extracurricular physical activity and undermine efforts to curb Britain’s record teenage obesity rates, a study suggests.

Under the national curriculum, secondary schools are supposed to use PE lessons to teach children how to lead physically active lives with the aim of promoting lifelong participation in healthy exercise.

The report suggests that non-competitive lifestyle activities, such as aerobics, Pilates, hill walking, stretching and toning routines should be encouraged. Even videos such as Supersize Me, which underlines the dangers of excessive consumption of junk food, are recognised as a valuable part of the PE lesson.

The study of more than 100 secondary schools found that too many PE teachers, particularly men, still emphasised the importance of competitive team sports at the expense of more individual activities.”

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