We were thrilled to read the newest summary of peer-reviewed research on the relationship between physical activity and academic performance among children and adolescents created by Active Education from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Their comprehensive summary yields the following insights:
- Many school systems have downsized or eliminated PE under the assumption that more classroom time will improve academic performance and increase standardized test scores. The available evidence from several controlled experimental studies in the United States, Canada,and Australia contradicts this view.
- All of these studies evaluated how additional instructional time for PE impacts academic performance, and clearly demonstrate that physical activity need not be sacrificed for academic excellence.
- In 2007, 287 fourth- and fifth-grade students in British Columbia were evaluated to determine if introducing daily classroom physical activity sessions affected their academic performance. Students in the intervention group participated in daily 10-minute classroom activity sessions in addition to having 80 minutes of PE per week. Despite increasing in-school physical activity time by approximately 50 minutes per week, students receiving the extra physical activity time had similar standardized test scores for mathematics, reading and language arts as did students in the control group.
- In 1999, researchers analyzed data from 759 fourth- and fifth-grade students in California and found that students’ scores on standardized achievement tests were not adversely affected by an intensive PE program that doubled or tripled PE time. On several test scores, students who spent more time in PE performed better than students in control groups.
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