I have been fortunateenough to spend a few days in Tsukuba, Japan as part of summer school withcolleagues from Korea, India, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France,the USA, England and Japan. As part of the programme a number of colleagues wereasked to present and contextualise the challenges facing physical education in their countries. From these discussions some commonthemes were collated and shared with the participants. It seems appropriatethat I should try and articulate these ideas in a blog…

The fundamentalconcern was the lack of research-evidence to show the positive impact thatphysical education has in young peoples’ lives and the significance it has inpeoples’ lifelong physical activity habits. This lack of evidence makes itdifficult to advocate the continued or enhanced role of physical education inschools. This concern comes at a time when provision for elementary-agedstudents was either threatened or under-resourced and when the poverty/wealth gapis ever widening. This growing “money divide” further highlights the starkdifferences between the affluent and the impoverished and their experiences ofphysical education. Greater national leadership is required. However, this supportneeds to be properly informed and must take account of increasingly diverse worldwidepopulations (and their cultures and languages). Finally there is a dividebetween the ideas of teachers and coaches when the learning of young athletesis considered. The destination is often similar but there is a lack of synergyin our approaches.  All of these themeshave emerged at a time when sports programmes remain the dominant context forthe teaching of physical education: a situation unlikely to changed unlessphysical education teacher education institutes take great steps to modernizeand reconsider their programmes.