Fewer than one in four teachers who took part in a study say they can meet Ontario’s mandatory standard for pupils’ physical activity, says a Western University researcher.
What’s worse, the recent study repeats similar 2015 research that found 50 per cent of teachers were able to implement the guidelines, says Barbara Fenesi, a researcher in Western’s faculty of education.
The latest study, gathered from interviews with 200 teachers across the province and published in BMC Public Health, shows only 23 per cent of teachers manage to meet the mandate.
“It’s a huge drop – it’s not even a quarter of teachers,” Fenesi said.
The sharp decline in meeting the standard of 20 minutes of daily physical activity, or DPA, is due to time constraints, lack of training and teachers’ low confidence they can implement the guidleines, according to the recent study.
Ontario’s DPA recommends pupils get 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day. Put in place in 2005, it intends for school to be a place where kids can have more physical activity.
“It’s really setting the foundation for lifelong healthy habits,” Fenesi said.
While teachers interviewed for the study were supportive of the standard, many said they faced obstacles due to what Fenesi describes as “glaring barriers that resurface over and over again in the research.”
Fenesi said she and the other study researchers — Lauren Martyn, Hannah Bigelow and Deborah Chiodo from Western’s faculty of education, Jeffrey Graham of Brock University’s department of child and youth studies and Michelle Ogrodnik from the University of Waterloo’s health and kinesiology departments — wanted to find out why that was.
“All the teachers we interviewed were very willing and wanted to incorporate more physical activity in their classrooms, but they were just a little bit lost as to how to go about doing that,” Fenesi said.
“Where do they find the resources? They don’t necessarily feel supported in terms of the amount of time and space they have in classrooms.”
The potential outcomes are dire as the level of obesity in children continues to rise, Fenesi said. From 1978 to 2004, the rate of overweight and obese children from ages of two to 17 increased to 26 per cent from 15.
It is predicted by 2031 one in three Canadian adults will be obese, she added.
Annie Kidder, executive director of the advocacy group People for Education, said she was “surprised and not surprised” at the results.
“In the past we have asked principals in the annual Ontario school survey about whether or not they were implementing DPA because it was mandatory,” Kidder said. “They said yes, but with a lot of provisos.
“They talked about the difficulty of fitting it in with all the other demands, they talked about how hard it is for teachers in the school day. So it’s not surprising in terms of the challenges, but it is surprising because it is mandatory.”
The DPA “has not been front of mind” for some time, Kidder said. “It was put in place very purposefully over a real concern kids weren’t getting enough daily physical activity. I think this study will help put it on the front page again.
“It’s wonderful that we’ve got some real data on whether or not it’s happening.”
Tammy Shubat, director of partnerships and public affairs at the Ontario Physical and Health Education Association, said the data are “noteworthy, but also not surprising.”
The association works with school boards, public health, government and other organizations to develop programs for “healthy, active living in schools and communities.”
“The COVID context has put unparalleled pressure on educators to do so many things. Perhaps in this case, it may serve us to focus less on the numbers and on the test scores and on policy compliance and to ask ourselves whether the kids are all right.
“Let’s worry less about the minutes, and worry more about what it feels like to participate.”
Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, a professor and researcher in educational inequality at Wilfrid Laurier University, has also noted the worsening effect of pandemic restrictions.
“It’s always been an enormous problem,” she said. “COVID showed very significant drops in children’s physical activity levels.
“The hope was having kids back in school would correspond with an increase in DPA. The truth is schools have not been places where kids get their physical activity nearly as much as they should. We don’t invest in the range of resources … that teachers identify really matter.”
Fenesi said her team is now working on new resources for teachers to help them incorporate more activity into learning.
“We’re in process of finalizing a DPA toolkit, which is a centralized resource with over 100 videos that teachers can use in their class to engage their students in physical activity,” she said. “There’s posters, there’s activities for different age groups, different intensities and different levels of ability.”