The Impact of National Curriculum Physical Education on the Teaching of Health‐Related Fitness: A Case Study in One English Town

The research reported in this paper was aimed at discovering the impact of the health‐related element within National Curriculum Physical Education (NCPE) on (a) the percentage of lesson time pupils were engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), (b) the percentage of lesson time allocated by teachers for pupils to engage in fitness activity or acquire health‐related fitness knowledge, and (c) the percentage of time teachers used behaviours likely to encourage pupils to participate in health‐promoting physical activity. Subjects were 20 physical education teachers employed in one town in southwest England. Two lessons of each teacher's choice in which they taught any activity to years 7, 8, or 9 were videotaped. Lessons were coded with SOFIT, an observational instrument designed to quantify factors thought to promote health‐related fitness in physical education. Data generated by SOFIT were entered into an SPSS programme to produce descriptive statistics. Results indicated that, with the exception of lessons on tennis in which pupils were engaged in walking or very active activity for 55.90% of lesson time, pupils were provided with limited opportunities to engage in MVPA. Teachers allocated very little time for pupils to participate in fitness activity (3.42%) or to acquire health‐related fitness knowledge (0.07%) and spent little time promoting (0.04%) and demonstrating (2.48%) fitness. A comparison of the data collected at these five schools during the present study with those collected in the summer term of 1992, indicated that the introduction of NCPE may have negatively impacted the amount of time pupils participated in MVPA in lessons on all summer activities except tennis and had a slightly positive impact on the amount of health‐related content included during lessons on all activities but swimming. Qualitative analysis of lessons videotaped in the two summer terms, however, suggested that any changes in lesson context were subtle.