According to a study, college students have lost 40% of their cardiovascular capacity in 40 years. The 30-minute program at school has been generalized to encourage children to exert themselves from an early age, based on the daily practice of physical activity. This year, 150 high-level athletes are involved with the students.
The finding is alarming. In 40 years, college students have lost 40% of their cardiovascular capacity and 17% of children are obese. reminds the government. However, specialists believe that it is possible to reverse this curve upstream thanks to the program 30 minutes of daily physical activity introduced since the start of the 2022 school year in the 36,250 primary schools in the country. The objective: to fight against a sedentary lifestyle in children. In addition, according to the WHO (World Health Organization), France is 119th out of 146 countries regarding the levels of physical activity of its youth. Conducted in 2022 among 6,321 sixth-grade schoolchildren (3,098 girls and 3,223 boys), the “Inverting the curves” study also reveals the deterioration for 35 years of physical capacity evaluated by the Maximum Aerobic Velocity (MAV), in both girls and boys.
What does the “30-minute French team” consist of?
To embody the generalization of 30 minutes of daily physical activity at schoolthe Minister of National Education and Youth, as well as the Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games have formed a pool of 150 high-level athletes. Each of them has committed to visiting a school at least once during the 2023 school year, to discuss with the students and discuss the benefits of daily sports practice for their physical and mental well-being. This exchange will then give rise to a sports session in agreement with the teachers and the directors of the establishments.
Is the 30 minutes of sport at school compulsory?
Since the start of the 2022 school year, these 30 minutes of sport have been compulsory. They are part of the objectives launched by the government in the run-up to Olympic Games 2024, and are inspired by the ‘Daily Mile’, a 15-minute daily exercise activity made popular by a primary school class in Scotland.
Minister Pap NDiaye indicated that it was not a question of sport strictly speaking, but of a encouragement to walk, move and run : “These 30 minutes must be done in the school, without logistical mobilization” he had also declared during his back-to-school press conference in 2022. A way also to operate his shift towards inclusive school, by offering everyone the possibility of having a good physical condition, a prerequisite recognized since for a long time to a healthy mind. The school of excellence wanted by the Minister aims to potentiate all the skills of the pupils from the small classes, intellectual and physical. It should also be remembered that the school is also involved in the prevention of drownings and the empowerment of pupils, with learning to cycle and swim, in the school and/or extracurricular context.
- Know how to ride a bike: allow students to learn to ride a bike and to master it, but also to know the road signs and learn about the highway code. The objective of these 10 hours of training for children aged 6 to 11 is to enable “the practice of cycling independently for all children before entering college.” The deployment of this learning in the school or extracurricular framework must take place massively by 2022.
- Aquatic ease: the objective of this plan initiated in April 2019 is to allow children from an early age to be comfortable in the water and to learn to swim. It targets children from an early age since it is aimed at school children aged 4 to 6 years as part of learning during school, extracurricular or extracurricular time.