Tv And Computer Games Take Their Toll

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday January 15, 1996

BY GRAHAM WILLIAMS

CAN your child hop, skip and jump and catch and throw balls? A lot of children can't and their fitness levels have dropped markedly in the past decade, according to two major studies that should be of concern to all parents and teachers.

Craig Golding, deputy director of Sydney University Sports Union, says: "When children are in Year 3 (age eight) you would expect them to know how to skip - but half the ones we see can't skip. Many have problems catching and throwing a ball and hopping."

Mr Golding, whose union runs a weekly physical education program for 630 children from three primary schools (Newtown North, Forest Lodge and Glebe), says children's lack of fitness is cause for major concern.

"Children's body fat is increasing in Australia because they are less physically active - they watch TV and do computer games more - and because of bad dietary habits, (they) eat more junk food," he says.

He believes it's a national crisis. Children will return to school this year less fit and more overweight than a decade ago, according to startling new studies in Newcastle and Melbourne (see breakout.)

Yet NSW schools do not have the resources or programs to do much about it. NSW primary schools have no specialist physical education teachers and often very inadequate programs. When schools hire outside agencies like the SU Sports Union to implement a physical education/sports program, the children pay about $1.50 each a week.

Carol James, executive director of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, says: "Physical health is marginalised in schools - looking after the body is secondary to learning to read and write."

She says that NSW primary schools have no specialist physical education teachers, although Queensland and Tasmania schools do. Most schools lack programs to develop fitness and skills such as hand-eye co-ordination, tumbling, throwing and kicking.

"There are a lot of recreation activities but not enough education to help children become fit, play well and develop skills - constant evidence that they are just mucking around," she says.

Mr Golding says: "It is a crazy situation that the primary schools don't have PE teachers. When they don't have a professional instructor, most schools feel very uncomfortable about teaching PE and so they don't run a proper phys-ed program."

This is a burden on parents, especially as they have to pay for swimming and other lessons. One of the schools in the SU Sports Union program is now rethinking whether its parents can afford to pay, says Mr Golding. Another, Forest Lodge, has sent an evaluation to him saying that while the program has improved the children's skills and four out of five teachers want a similar program this year, the fees are a problem.

The evaluation says most of the teachers now feel confident in working with the children to develop their skills in the sports taught in the program, and the children enjoy it.