The article examines the problems of forming a key competency in middle-aged students - health-preserving competence. The main goal of the educational branch "Health and Physical Culture" is to develop health-preserving competence by acquiring skills in preserving, strengthening, and using health and caring for it, developing the physical culture of the individual, and readiness to act in emergency situations and protect the Fatherland. Health-preserving competence as: key is formed at the interdisciplinary level through mastering subject competencies, taking into account the specifics of subjects and the cognitive abilities of primary school students; subject - as a result of mastering the content of subjects of the educational field and students mastering the relevant competencies. The general content lines of the educational branch "Health and Physical Culture" are health, physical culture, life safety, defense of the Fatherland and civil defense. The purpose of the article is to study the ability of future physical culture teachers to form key competencies in middle-aged students in physical culture lessons. The research was conducted at Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State University in 2024–2025 academic year, in which third and fourth year students (47 people) of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports participated. Fourth year students showed an average of 10.0 points higher performance compared to the third year students, according to the assessment method. The level of preparedness of future physical education teachers for the formation of key health-preserving competencies in middle-aged students in physical education lessons at school can be presented as a system of organizational and psychological and pedagogical measures of a higher education institution aimed at students' mastery of health-preserving knowledge, skills, abilities and experience in implementing various forms of physical education in secondary education institutions.
Hrinko et al. (Sat,) studied this question.