“piecemeal implementation” and a poorly defined objective

“The finding is worrying. » This is how senators Béatrice Gosselin (Les Républicains) and Laure Darcos (Les Indépendants-République et Territories group) summarize their analysis of the implementation of the program of thirty minutes of daily physical activity (APQ) in schools, launched in February 2020 by the organizing committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as part of its legacy program, and taken over by the government.

In their report, published Friday September 27, the senators first emphasize that this program has not been applied as widely as the public authorities were willing to say. “Contrary to official declarations, only 42% of schools apply the APQ for the majority of their students, a figure well below the 90% announced by the President of the Republic [Emmanuel Macron] »write the two elected officials.

Initially offered to voluntary schools, the system had been officially extended to all primary schools at the start of the 2022 school year. For the senators, the “partial deployment” would hold on to “a lack of coordination between the different actors involved”but also to “objectives that are still unclear”.

Lack of sports kits

Recalling that the announcement of the generalization of thirty minutes to all primary schools at the start of the 2022 school year was made on June 2, 2022 by Emmanuel Macron, they note that“we had to wait more than six weeks for a memo from the Ministry of National Education to translate the presidential declaration.” But without bringing “no clarification or any additional means for teachers to concretely implement the system”.

Regarding means, the report underlines in particular that the distribution of the sports kit, which constituted a “important part of ministerial communication”was complicated. This one “was to be distributed to all schools before the end of 2023, then due to delivery delays before the end of the 2024 school year”. However, according to the two senators, “this new deadline has not been respected throughout the territory”. In this regard, they mention “difficulties in routing between the storage location of the kits at the academic or district level and each school”, but also “an insufficient number” of kits.

While insisting on the fact that the announcement of the generalization of the thirty minutes of APQ had aroused “many questions” among teachers, many of them having it “perceived as the need to add thirty minutes of sport per day to school time which cannot be extended”, the authors of the report consider above all that “the name of this device has been misinterpreted”.

“The use of the terms of sporting activities instead of physical and the presentation of the system as a means of “fully integrating sport into school”, mixing pell-mell sports clubs, professional sport as well as performances sports have sowed trouble about its objective”, advance Béatrice Gosselin and Laure Darcos.

“Active and well-being breaks”

Physical activities and sports activities “are not synonymous”, they insist, deploring that “the sporting aspect dominates in presidential communication on this system”whereas it should be, according to them, “above all, a means of combating a sedentary lifestyle”.

C30 minutes of APQ “are not intended to build a “sporting nation”, but a “healthy nation””consider the authors of the report, deploring, in passing, « l’absence regrettable » a public health evaluation of the benefits of the system: “With rare exceptions – in Haut-de-France for example, where the Regional Health Agency (ARS) was associated by the regional academic management with youth, commitment and sports – the ARS n were not associated with the deployment of this system. »

Concerning the educational aspect, the first assessments however show, for the students,“an improvement in learning conditions”. “Active breaks organized in class between two sequences allow students to refocus and return to conducive learning conditions. Others highlight a calming of the school climate and better interactions between students”detail the two senators.

These make six recommendations. In particular, they write, it is necessary “reaffirm the public health objectives assigned to it”for example by renaming the device “active and well-being breaks”. They also emphasize the need to support teachers “in its daily implementation” and to associate “all the actors involved in the child’s time”, whether municipalities or approved sports associations – “so far little concerted action for this project” –as well as parents. It is thus, according to them,” avoid ” that this initiative does not remain « a gadget » of the Olympic and Paralympic Games