BRITAIN lags behind 12 other countries in Europe in the amount of school sport its pupils do.

Although comparisons are hard to make, a study by the European Union of Physical Education Associations in 1997 ranked Britain thirteenth out of 25 countries, with an average of only 106 minutes of PE a week between the ages of 6 and 18.

Over their school careers, French children had about 443 hours of PE more than their British counterparts; Swiss children had 379 hours more and German children, 114 hours more.

British youngsters received less than two hours a week of PE in secondary schools, compared to more than three hours for those in Austria, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.

In France, Germany and the Netherlands, pupils got three hours of PE. In Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy and Luxembourg, they had between two and two-and-a-half hours a week.

The UK’s average of 90 minutes of PE a week in primary schools was, with Ireland, the lowest in Europe. Children in Switzerland, Portugal, Luxembourg and France had PE for at least three hours.

In 2002 the Council of Europe noted “a serious decline in the quality and time allocated to teaching physical education and sport” in schools across the Continent.

Primary schools were devoting an average of 121 minutes to PE each week, with secondary schools allocating 117 minutes on average. Pupils in a quarter of schools, however, took part in only 90 minutes of sport.

Richard Bailey, the director of the Centre for Physical Education Research at Canterbury Christ Church University College, said that sporting activity in English schools declined sharply after the teachers’ strikes of the mid-1980s.

“Before then, there was large-scale extra-curricular provision in primary schools and every secondary school every day of the week. Every school had a comprehensive programme of after-school activities and after 1985 everything changed,” the professor said.

The advent of the national curriculum and, since 1997, of the literacy and numeracy hours in primary schools reduced the time that many schools had allocated to PE.

Growing parental reluctance to allow children to walk or to cycle to school — and an unwillingness to let them play outside with friends — had contributed to the rise in inactivity.

“Most of the research shows that 20 years ago children were given permission to cycle or walk to school at around age 8 or 9. That has now increased to 11 or 12,” he said.

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