Move for Well-being in Schools: Implementing physical activity in the Danish Public School

In Danish Public schools, the former government initiated the biggest reshaping of primary and lower secondary schools in forty years emphasising that 45 minutes of exercise and physical activity must be part of the integrated school day at all year levels in order to further the children’s and young persons’ state of health and to support their motivation and learning in all subjects. In the light of the focus on physical activity in schools, not only for health and learning but also for well-being, we launched a comprehensive research project focusing on the benefit of a multi-component physical activity intervention on well-being. This article presents the context, intervention and initial results of the project with a specific focus on implementation and the educator’s experiences with the intervention. Danish public schools There are 98 municipalities in Denmark with 1.605 municipal schools and a total of 595.573 students distributed in 28.591 classes making the average number of students per class 19.6 and the average teacher/ student ratio 1:10.7. Classes must not exceed 28 students. In Denmark, public schooling is free. Public schools consists of a one-year, pre-school class and nine years from primary and lower secondary education, grades 1 to 10. Danish children start pre-school at age 6, meaning formal education caters for the 7 16/17-year-olds. Education is compulsory for everyone but it is the decision of individual families to choose whether education is received in the public school, a private school or at home. All schooling in Denmark must meet the national standards of the ‘Public School Act’, which provides the overall framework for the school ́s activities. This Act contains aims, subjects, regulations on the Common Objectives for the individual subjects as well as leadership and organization of the school system. Danish Public schools are not examination-oriented and students are grouped into classes by age. The process of evaluating the students’ learning outcomes is met by a range of obligatory national tests that have been carried out since 2006. Continuous assessment marks are given in years 8, 9 and 10 in Danish, Maths, English, German, French and a range of other subjects including Biology, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, History, Social Studies, Religious Education and, of course, Physical Education (PE). Daily physical activity in Danish schools In 2012, the former government in Denmark, with broad cross-party agreement, initiated the biggest reshaping of primary and lower secondary schools in forty years under the slogan Make a good school better. From the outset there has been broad agreement among political parties, employers and employees in the educational world and voluntary sports organizations that children and young people should be more physically active during the course of a school day. The reform states “that a daily 45 minutes’ exercise and physical activity (PA) must be part of the integrated school day at all form levels of the public school in order to further the children’s and young persons’ state of health and to support their motivation and learning in all subjects”. Of particular interest, not least to Physical Education (PE) teachers, is the way this intention regarding the children’s well-being, physical activity (PA) and PE in the school reform translates into practice. Among other things, the reform explicitly states that “the longer time spent in school makes it possible to ensure that all children are physically active and exercise every day”. Opportunities for more PA are provided for example in assisted learning, an increased number of PE and sports lessons in Year 1 and via PE examinations in Year 9. With this reform, the PE teachers’ traditional target of One Hour a Day, as proclaimed by the 1814 Education Act, has been almost achieved for the first time. The school as setting for PA interventions In many countries, school-based approaches to PA have the obvious advantage that the children who Søren Smedegaard University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Students must complete the following national tests: • Danish, with a focus on reading in form levels 2, 4, 6 and 8. • English in form level 7. • Mathematics in form level 3 and 6. • Geography in form level 8. • Biology in form level 8. • Physics/chemistry in form level 8.