PESS

The UK has always had an amateur approach when looking at sport, thismeans that when participating in sport it is not to win for extrinsic rewards it is just to take part. This amateur ethic has been part of the british culture from before the 1800's, so it is within british society that participating is the most important part of sport. this can be seen in the National Curriculum for PE (NCPE), where it states that the aims are to develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities, ensure pupils are physically active for sustained periods of time  engage in competitive sports and activities, pupils will lead healthy, active lives. There is now also the added pressure on PE to increase participation because of the obesity crisis. In the UK, PE is seen as the number one ay to fight against the obesity crisis as it is the only time in a week that children are atually made to be physically active in the curriculum and for some children altogether since their parents don't encourage it. Because of this, PESS is given quite a high status in the UK, but this isnt shown on the curriculum.

 

In Europe, there is only about 100minutes allocated to PESS in the primay curriculum and 102 minutes in the high school curriculum. this means children will get on average less than 2 hours of compulsary PESS per weekwhich will make it very hard to fight the obesity crisis. It is made even harder given that only only 55% of pupils participate in at least 3 hours of PE and out of hours school sport.