Chennai: Students will soon get to practice physical activities for an hour a day, according to a circular issued by the Tamil Nadu School Education Department on Thursday. The announcement comes a day after the School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan said that students will start their day with 15 minutes of physical exercise.
The one hour of physical activity will be split into a 15 minute session before the daily morning assembly and 45 minutes after school hours, the circular said. So far students only get two 45 minutes physical education classes in a week.
In a tweet on Wednesday, he urged the Chief Educational Officers in all the districts to take the idea forward. The aim of this initiative is to promote fitness and wellness among students in addition to building their personality, team work and leadership skills.
Further, dedicating time for physical activities will lighten the mood of students and help them to focus better on education as well, the circular observed. "Through this initiative, we can also motivate students to participate in district and State level sports competitions," it said.
Students will be made to participate in physical activities such as sports, dance, games, yoga and physical education can be encouraged using the help of physical education instructors at schools. However, school teachers are confused about how to implement this initiative.
"If we allow students to play for 15 minutes just before assembly, they will find it very difficult to concentrate after that," said J Sharmila, a class 5 science teacher from a private school in the city. She added that many schools close by 3 pm, when it is still sunny. "It will be difficult to implement it on a daily basis," she said.
K Maran, a Mathematics teacher said that students from classes 10,11 and 12 will not be able to engage in physical activity after school hours as they have special classes to prepare for public exams. "Students from five different classes will have public exams from this year. So pulling them out of special classes to do physical activity may have an impact on their performance. Many students also leave for private tuition or other extra-curricular classes after school. It will be hard to retain them," he said.
Another hurdle to this initiative is lack of space to play, said PK Ilamaran, the leader of Tamil Nadu Government Teachers Association. "Majority of the schools do not have playgrounds. So where will we make students play?" he asked. In addition to this he said that the government should employ more teachers to carry out these additional
duties as majority of their time gets consumed by this leaving little time for subject education.