Secondary schools are losing the struggle to keep girls physically active enough and the fitness gap between boys is rising.
A new study revealed as part of the irish Life Health Schools Fitness Challenge shows that while boys are 32% fitter then girls across the board at first year, that figure rises to 42% of a gap by the time students go into transition or fourth year.
Over one-quarter of all secondary schools in the country signed up for the 2016 challenge, with 22,700 students taking part in the simple series of tests to determine levels of physical fitness.
“Any form of physical activity is better than none. We should move away from the rigidity of the current PE curriculum to short periods of physical activity that encourage senior cycle students, particularly girls to stay active,” said Professor Niall Moyna of Dublin City University who oversees the research.
“Research we recently published showed that 75% of unfit 15-year-old boys had high blood pressure and 62% were at a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes.”
“These are incredibly worrying statistics. Exercise should be viewed as medicine, as it can positively influence current and future physical and mental health. Greater emphasis should be placed on promoting physical activity and other healthy lifestyle behaviours among students.”
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“The physical, psychological and social benefits of sport and exercise have been well documented, but unfortunately as this research shows, we still see reduced participation levels in Irish adolescent girls compared to boys,” added Kate Kirby of the Irish Institute of Sport.
“Numerous reasons have been put forward to explain this including losing interest, limited time, perceived lack of competence in competitive settings and fear of appearing ‘uncool’ or ‘unfeminine’.”
“Big fitness gains can be made in a relatively short period of time though and these can have a real positive impact on students’ motivation and self-confidence.”
The provision of single-sex physical activities and placing less emphasis on competition can be other areas of action to get more girls physically active at this important stage of their development while the benefit of promoting positive athletic female role models cannot be underestimated.”
The Presentation Secondary School in Milltown, County Kerry emerged as the fittest overall mixed school in the country while St Macartan’s College in Monaghan where GAA Director General Paraic Duffy is a former Principal won through was the fittest Boys school and Mount Anville in Dublin the same for girls.
Image Credit: Inpho.ie
