Schools should cut down on competitive sport because it is putting children off exercise and undermining the government's drive to tackle obesity, researchers warned today.
Last month, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, promised to bring back competitive sport in schools and to extend the range of sports offered to children.
However, a new study by Laura Ward, from Loughborough University, claimed the heavy emphasis on fitness and competitive sport in many secondary schools is doing little or nothing to help curb the UK's record teenage obesity rates.
Schools should instead offer pupils non-competitive 'lifestyle' activities, such as aerobics, Pilates and hill walking that will help them develop healthy exercise habits.
Schools have been required to teach pupils about health-related exercise (HRE) as well as other physical activities such as team games, gymnastics and dance since 1992. The hope is that this emphasis will encourage children's lifelong involvement in health-promoting physical activities.
The government is preparing to increase the number of hours of PE pupils take part in from two to five hours a week by the London Olympics in 2012.
But Ward will tell the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association in Edinburgh later today that too many PE teachers, particularly men, are still emphasising the importance of competitive team sports at the expense of more individual activities.
They use HRE lessons for fitness testing or instruction in the use of fitness equipment turning off pupils who are not "developing healthy exercise habits" as a result.
Researchers questioned 112 PE teachers in local authorities throughout England and found that the vast majority viewed health-related exercise as a valuable part of the PE curriculum.
But their survey revealed that many teachers had a narrow view of what health related exercise involved and only a poor understanding of how they should promote such exercise within PE lessons.
Ward said: "The limited experiences that many teachers had of HRE in their initial training may be a key contributor to the narrow views and limited understanding that many had.
"Teachers' own deeply-embedded attitudes are also influential. A teacher who has experienced lifelong success in sport is likely to want to focus upon competitive team games within their lessons. This then presents us with a persistent cycle whereby sport is privileged within PE and health-related exercise is marginalised."
The cycle is unlikely to be broken without more training, she added.
"Continuing professional development, focusing specifically on health-related exercise, could help to equip teachers with the knowledge, skills and understanding to promote physical activity more effectively."
Last month, the prime minister, during his trip to Beijing for the closing ceremony of the Olympics, said the government had now begun to "correct the tragic mistake of reducing the competitive element in school sports".
