Two hours of PE every day says Boris.

[modeller]

Boris Johnson suggests schools should have two hours of PE every day, which would be almost half the school day.
Where does he think the time is going to come from ? The curriculum at both primary and secondary schools is already overcrowded.

If it was possible to find the time I would suggest the teaching of more practical
and domestic skills would be of far more value for life.

[craft1948]

I went to a grammar school which had a six day timetable, and we had 7 x 40 minute games lessons in each 6 days. Schools nowadays seem to have much less than that.

[shaneystar2]

Lol...although they should have more exercise instead of being slumped over a desk all day .But two hours a day is a bit OTT.
We used to have to do a brisk run round the hockey field most mornings in my day and there were at least some daily exercises along the lines of ..I must ,I must improve my bust type stuff plus gym and hockey twice a week.

[sherrardk]

Schools do aout 25 hours a week of lessons - how can anybody justify using up 10 hours on PE. I suspect that what they all mean is after school and lunchtime activities (but they won't want to pay anyone to provide them).

[hc4361]

The school day is far too short, especially for the over 11 year olds.

Extend the day by an hour or two. Two hours of PE is unrealistic, but an hour a day would be fine.

[doctordb]

Enjoy the olympic games whilst it lasts, once it's over we'll have an endless queue of MP's trying to sound 'on message' by spouting rubbish like this.

[sunny-dave]

I agree with crafty and hc4361 - when/why did the secondary school day/week get to be so short ?

We used to have 37x45 minute periods (about 27 hours) of academic work plus 10 PE/games periods. Plus homework ...

[Eve]

Judging by some of the frightening drop in standard of numeracy and grammar, I'd have thought that would be more of a priority!

I also agree with more practical life skills.

[daffy654]

My son only has one PE lesson per week, he does 1½-2 hours at the gym 5 days a week though.

[mike11111]

Curriculum overloaded? Then where did we find the time to have 3 hours Latin per week? Of course we didn't waste time on things like "personal and social development" and "food and textile technology".

[Robinia]

Two hours every day? I'd have run away if we'd had that! :)
When I reached senior/grammar school we only did about 3 hours per week PE and that was too much for me, I hated it, lol. However, we did walk 2-3 miles there and back every day and were out and about after school so we had more than enough exercise.

[woofgang]

I am amazed at how early the secondary school children seem to be going home. We had to be in school for 9 am register and the last lesson ended at 4 pm. We had an hour's gym and two hours games a week changing to less gym and an afternoon out at playing fields in lower fifth.
Having said that I would sooner have stabbed myself with pencils than do 2 hours P E a day!

[doctordb]

Yeah, because that latin is real handy in the modern workplace. ;-)

[Robinia]

lol woofy :)

[sophie_1003]

Even if the secondary school day was extended to 8 hours a day 2 hours of PE seems too much; but let's say this was put in to place, this would leave 6 hours a day. English and Maths would be given greater emphasis than PE, say 2 and a half hours a day for each (5 hours total) that would leave half an hour each day; 2.5 hours a week in which to teach science, geography, history, RE, PSE, music, art, technology and foreign languages; and that's not even accounting for a lunch break.

[sophie_1003]

Mike; food and textile technology is what used to be Domestic Studies (I imagine what the girls did whilst the boys did the 'real' subject of woodwork)

[craft1948]

Having said that my grammar school had a fully equipped gym, 2 netball courts, 4 lawn tennis courts, 2 hard courts, 8 clay courts, a hockey pitch, 2 rounders pitches, a cricket pitch, and there was rowing if you wanted to join in with the boy's grammar school.

[modeller]

When I was teaching we had motor engineering and home economics ( cooking )
and all those pupils who wanted them obtained apprenticeships , but both those subjects were dropped in favour of the all embracing term technology.
At a stroke all those jobs and apprenticeships disappeared.

[sophie_1003]

Ooh, forgot; ICT also needs to be taught in that 2.5hrs a week somewhere!

[shaneystar2]

Home economics ? Gawd I must be old ...it was called Domestic Science in my day:)

[tonyav]

shaney, the girls did that while us lads did woodwork or metalwork.