The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has made physical education compulsory for class 9 to 12 in all its affiliated schools.
“Health is often a state of physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual well- being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. Hence, we have decided to mainstream health and physical education for class 9 and 12 with the aim of preventing them from having a sedentary lifestyle or turn into couch potatoes,” a CBSE official said.
A 150-page manual has been developed by the board in which detailed guidelines have been listed for schools. The manual also contains the methodologies to execute the guidelines.
Under the new guidelines, the schools have been instructed by the CBSE to dedicate one period for sports everyday during which students will be free to do or participate in any physical activity in playground. The physical activities have already been listed in the manual basis which the students will be graded later.
However, Health and Physical Education (HPE) will be different from Physical Education (PE) academic elective which is offered to class 10 and 12 students. “Earlier, there used to be two co-scholastic areas — Health and Physical Education and Work Education. Now the two have been merged and the total periods allocated for the two will be used for HPE. This will ensure that schools are under no pressure of adjusting the time tables at the cost of academic subjects,” the official said.
Last month, CBSE asked all schools to reserve one period for “Health and Physical Education (HPE)” while preparing their time-table for the 2018-19 session.
