DCU researchers launch “PE at Home” to help children progress their physical education during Covid-19 and beyond

Fears a generation of children could miss out on physical skills development

DCU academics have joined forces to devise a new “PE at Home” video series which will help primary school children to continue to develop their physical education skills and knowledge during Covid-19 and beyond.

Already, there are concerns that childrens’ physical education skills and physical competence development will plateau or regress during this global pandemic, and that a critical time period for this development may well be missed by a generation of children.

Recently, Luxembourg announced that there will be no physical education for the forthcoming school year while the repurposing of PE halls, to provide additional capacity, has been included in the roadmap for schools reopening here in September.

“Children have a vital window for the development of basic movement skills during their primary school period, after which it gets an awful lot harder to develop and master the same skills.

Mastering these skills is essential for our children to lead healthy and active lives into adulthood.

The danger for a lot of children now is that through the situation of social restriction, and school closure created by Covid-19, there is a real risk of them missing this critical window which can potentially have long term health consequences.

We have to make sure that PE is not neglected - a solution such as PE at Home is vital,” commented joint research lead Dr Sarahjane Belton, DCU Faculty of Science and Health.

‘PE at Home’- Keeping children learning and active through Covid-19’ series partners with the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST) and with the support of the Irish Heart Foundation.

The video series aims to provide a viable national solution to the problem of keeping PE learning progressing during the Covid-19 restrictions period and beyond.

It is anticipated the series will be a valuable teaching resource not only during the current school closure, but also when schools reopen - as with guidelines in place for social distancing, the ways in which physical education teaching takes place may have to change.

Dr Maura Coulter, DCU Institute of Education said,

“As parents and teachers we are conscious of what is happening in our subject world-wide and were astonished that in Luxembourg, there is to be no PE in schools for the next school year.

Missing out on any subject for over 18 months would be seen as a travesty and therefore we want PE at Home to be a solution so that Irish children's physical education is not neglected.”

The series of recorded lessons, which are age appropriate to specific classes, will be made available to schools, teachers and parents through Dublin City University’s social platforms, and scoilnet.ie.

Filmed over a number of weeks, each lesson focuses on a specific element of the Irish PE curriculum, engaging adults and children in fun but educational activities.

The pilot series is now available, and will be refined and extended based on research that will be carried out to evaluate the user friendliness from the perspective of those using the lessons.

The new research programme is part of 16 research projects funded by DCU’s recently established Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub which is aiming to find solutions to the challenges posed by Covd-19 by focussing on five key areas; technologies for rapid diagnostics for Covid-19; responding to the challenges faced by frontline healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing home environments; developing novel solutions to enhance the national testing strategy; mitigating the impact on organisations, workers and the economy; tackling societal issues in a Covid-19 world (education, business, the citizen).

Full details available at PE at Home Series