Brussels, 25/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - Children are too sedentary, do not do enough physical activity and schools are cutting back on it too much in their curricula, said the competent ministers at a guideline debate held on Tuesday 25 November in the framework of the “Sport” Council chaired by the Italian Secretary of State for Sport, Graziano Delrio.
Sport is vital for the mental and physical development of children. It promotes essential values such as fair play and respect for others, and encourages concentration and therefore academic learning, the ministers stressed. For this reason, they expressed concern at the fact that school-age children are “dropping out of sports”, a phenomenon observed in all member states. This is rife among young people, particularly girls and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, firstly due to a lack of funding and infrastructure in schools and, secondly, young people's increasing addiction to new technologies and video games.
The ministers examined measures which could be taken to do more to promote sport and physical activity in schools. These could, for example, create more links to local sports clubs and offer extra-curricular activities of interest to children. They should also draw attention to the importance of “healthy lifestyles” and generally get young people involved in major national European sporting events. The first European week of sport, which will be held in September 2015 by initiative of the European Commission, will be an excellent tool to stress the benefits of sport in the member states, the ministers said.
The EU working plan in favour of sport 2014-2017 provides for recommendations to be made to encourage physical education in schools and encourage cooperation with the sports sector, the national authorities, the local authorities and the private sector.
The aim of the debate was also to feed into this preparatory work. (IL)