What is a quality Health and Physical Education program in your context?

In the mid-1990's I was appointed as HPE Head of Department at a secondary (Year/Grade 8 to 12) school. At the first department meeting, the HPE team members to a person told me 'things weren't working' and there was a need to 'do things differently'. Not working included low student interest and engagement in HPE, perception that school leadership did not take HPE seriously or see it's value. I didn;t rush into change. We spent 6 months developing a plan of action. Below are the questions I used  to guide the collaborative development of a 5 year plan with this HPE team to revise and renew the HPE/PE curriculum. When I started at the school, we had 4 students of a final year cohort of 52 doing Year 12 PE, and only one semester of PE at Year 11. Six years later, we had two semesters of PE at Year 11, and 22 of a final year cohort of 54 doing Year 12 PE. We had a full year "Specialist PE' as an elective offering in Year 10 alongside 'regular' PE. 

I have since used these questions in a session with many schools to assist their teaching teams reflect on how they are being (or can be) deliberate in achieving their vision for HPE/PE in their school, and for a number of years these questions formed the basis of a session in the ACHPER(SA) HPE Leaders PD Day. The questions provide a good' checklist' towards the relevance of what we plan for students (the curriculum), how interconnected the subjects (Health Education, Physical Education, Outdoor/Adventure Education) within the learning area are, and how connected into school decision making HPE/PE is. 

Figure 1. Key components of quality HPE (Pill, 2004)

1. Outcomes

• What are our intended long term outcomes (our vision for the students at the end of compulsory HPE)?

• What outcomes are expected by the school community (do we really know? If not, how can we find out)? 

• How do we ensure that our assessment tools are effective in measuring what students 'can do'? (how do we know they are effective?) 

• How do we track student learning to gain valid and reliable data about student learning (and if we currently don't track student learning how can we establish tracking)?

2. Strategies

•  What is our vision for student engagement in movement culture outside the school gate now, and in their future?

• How are we ensuring that our HPE programs are 'setting students' up to achieve this vision for active and healthy living beyond the school gate now and into their possible future?

• How are we ensuring that are year level programs are subject to continuous improvement, including how we take account of the latest research to inform our best practice?

• How do we gain feedback on the effectiveness of our teaching and where our own learning about our work needs to be focused?

• What are we commenting on to parents? Is it focused on the things we have said matter to encouraging students engagement in their health and physical activity now and in their future?

• What is our group and individual professional learning plans so that we can continue to get better at helping the students get better?

3. Environment

• Do all HPE areas (Health, Physical Education, Dance, Outdoor Education) link together and support each other?

• What are we doing to influence school leadership decision making about the facilities, resources and time allocation for HPE. In other words, how are we 'managing up'?

• How do we ensure that the department is represented on school development and planning committees so we are proactive in 'having a voice'?

• Does the school have policies that support the work we are doing (such as a healthy canteen policy, drug policy, bullying policy, 'fair play' policy)? If not, how can we get these policies developed?

After working with a few schools on curriculum review or strategic planning, I had added an additional set of questions, which I share below and come from ideas in the paper Promoting physical activity and health in schools (available from my Research Gate site here)

• What opportunities for physical activity accumulation currently exist in our school day, and what additional opportunities can we identify?

• Is physical education integrated into other subjects? Is health education? Is health education and physical education content integrated where possible?

• Do we account for different learning needs and readiness to learn appropriately by applying differentiation strategies in our curriculum planning?

• What school-community links are available for health education and physical education? How can we leverage them?

• What opportunities exist for the sharing of ideas within our school, and beyond it?

 Schools and PE teachers in particular have potentially more to offer than any other institution in helping children and youth lead active and healthy lives. Children need be 'health literate' and 'physically literate', and by extension movement literate (Adele Kentel & Dobson, 2007; Ennis, 2010; Kilbourne, 1992), game literate (Mandigo et al., 2009) and sport literate (Pill, 2009) (in it's broadest meaning, 'literate' means educated). It is the Health and Physical Education (HPE/PHE/PDHPE) area that has curriculum responsibility for this development. 

Figure 2. Curriculum considerations for teaching for effective learning 

Taking the time to reflect on the above will enable you to gain more or further insights that assist the work that you do in connecting children and young people to the value of the continuous pursuit of health and physical activity behaviour through the curriculum and broader school influence of the HPE Department.

Related blogs

Leading learning - teaching as self-inquiry here

The PE teacher as the lead learner and leadership for learning in PE here

Thanks for stopping by and reading this blog. If you would like to connect with the ideas here or any of the ideas I have blogged about, you can contact via my email here

References

Adele Kentel, J., & Dobson, T. M. (2007). Beyond myopic visions of education: revisiting movement literacy. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 12(2), 145–162.

Ennis, C. D. (2010). On their own: Preparing students for a lifetime. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 81(5), 17-22.

Kilbourne, J. (1992). The natural beauty of the human body moving in space - the homogeneity of dance & sport. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 63(5), 37-38.

Mandigo, J., Butler, J., & Hopper, T. (2009). What is teaching games for understanding? A Canadian perspective. In TGfU... simply good pedagogy: Understanding a complex challenge, pp. 11-22.

Pill, S. (2004). Quality learning in physical education. Active & Health Magazine, 11(3), 13-14.

Pill, S. (2009). Sport teaching in physical education: Considering sports literacy. In Creating active futures: edited proceedings of the 26th ACHPER International Conference (pp. 123-133).

First published 29/08/2018 / Updated 20/01/2026