Schools are to set to enforce children to do PE even if they have a note from the parents saying they want their children to be excused from the lesson due to illness. It has been suggested that only doctors notes are acceptable and not a parents note. No more parents writing a note saying that their child needs to miss a physical education lesson! No more PE excuse notes written from home.
Parents can no longer excuse children from PE activities?
The reason for this move, argue some headteachers, is that too many children are skipping PE and that it has impacted on children’s health and the rising levels of obesity. During a phone in on This Morning this issue was debated with a journalist rolling her eyes at a parent concerned of the impact on children with invisible illnesses.
Illnesses which are often variable in the child’s health and well being on any given day. That discussion (quite rightly) caused offence to parents and prompted this post of mine on Hypermobility syndrome – the invisible illness. It had over 15K hits in just three days!
However the issue is far bigger than that initial phone call, and over the past few days the very idea that a doctors note is needed to excuse your child from PE has gnawed away at me for the following reasons.
Here are seven reasons why parents should not need to provide medical notes to excuse their child from physical education activities:
Parents parent
It is what we are supposed to do. Remember when your child was little and health visitors, midwives, nurses and doctors told you that ‘you know your child best’. As parents, we are told to trust our instincts, that we know when our children are not well or what is best for them. When did this stop becoming the norm? Why are parents now second to what the child’s teacher thinks?
Reducing the role of the parent?
Over the years more and more family functions have been taken from the family and handed over to so-called ‘experts and professionals’. The universal school dinners have been implemented as a response to the rising levels of obesity – parents are unable to feed their children a healthy nutritious lunch? Will parents be needed in the future aside from bearing the child in the first place.
Most teachers will not want this.
Most teachers like my own colleagues and my children’s teachers want the best for the children in their care. These teachers are often parents themselves and want to work in partnership with home. We all know that children learn best when in a partnership with home. Adding this level of mistrust at the parents will suit no one.
The cost.
Our NHS is fit to burst, our GP’s under enormous pressure and we may need a sick note to excuse from a PE lesson? The cost and burden of this are laughable.
A two tier system will exist.
With GP’s now available online will the cost of a private appointment spiral and those with money will pay for a private appointment and the subsequent note to avoid PE thus forcing another gap between those who can afford the hidden costs of succeeding in the education system.
They are well enough to do PE??
The journalist said exactly that, that if a child was well enough to be in school they are well enough to do PE. What planet was she on? My child is asthmatic and therefore at times, physical education is dangerous to her health. She will be well enough to attend school but maybe not to run about or participate in PE activities especially if we are talking something like cross-country in the winter! If the PE lessons were tailored to individual needs it might be a different outcome. Furthermore we are told that our children need to be in school as much as possible, attendance monitored by Ofsted and there are many occasions children go to school when not fully fit.
This was the same journalist also said that ‘you are supposed to be in pain after a run’.
Wow – really? There is a difference between pain and feeling tired after physical exercise. Yes you should feel out of breath but you should not be crying in pain. My daughter has had major hip surgery and we expect there to be more in the future. Her treatment has cost thousands and when her little legs hurt I listen to her. I am guided by her and know that she has overdone it. The same for many other invisible illnesses.
My children love PE, the eldest, despite regular injuries, is a county and club hockey player. I have stood on more cold sidelines watching her or driving her to sports matches than most. Dylan plays basketball with his friends most lunchtimes and Erin does whatever she can to please. I have rarely needed to write a note asking them to sit out sport.
I have never had to coercive them to take their PE kit to school. I have never had a refuser. I am just a normal parent like many others. I am accountable for my children and I want to be. Do not think that I cannot parent, do not think that I need someone else to decide what is in my children’s best interests. I am their mother, I parent them along with their father.
Together we know our children and we don’t need someone else to tell us when our child needs to sit out of PE.
9 Responses
Very well said.
How about the child that has sprained an ankle, ok to walk around school but running not so much? Or asthma as you say, or any number of reasons why a child can manage school but sport would be too much.
Absolutely ludicrous. It costs me £15 to see a Dr, due to needing taxis for my own health, so I’ll need to pay £15 for a Dr’s note whenever my child is well enough for school but not sport?
Let’s see attendance rates dropping just so kids aren’t forced in to physical activity that’ll likely make them more I’ll even though regular lessons would’ve been fine.
Emma, I so hear you. Both of mine are hypermobile with my daughter also having juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Like your children, PE causes pain. With my daughter it also results in her flaring the next day and on a number of occasions she is unable to walk from her bed to the toilet and ends up missing school. How on earth can this be of benefit to her?
I really can see Drs starting charge for these notes. Don’t start me on the clogging up of Drs practices with disabled children having to go and get these notes. I’m sorry but if a child is disabled, the parent knows what is best for their health. I take great offense that this decision could be taken away from me.
Well said huni. You are right, parents parent, it is what we do. Medical notes to excuse kids from PE is ridiculous. Thanks for linking up to #TheList x
Interesting post. I missed all the discussions about this. Generally I’m in agreement with you. I think most parents are capable of knowing when their child really can’t do any/certain sports, and aren’t going to write a note unless necessary. The GPs have better things to do than this – it’s never going to happen. I also think that most teachers will know if there’s a recurring illnesss or recent issue vs a child who skives and doesn’t try when they can do sport.
I don’t see what the problem is now vs when we were children, apart from the fact that nowadays schools offer a lot more sport options for school children, and therefore there should be more keen to take part because they’re not all forced into one activity.
Thanks for linking up to #SchoolDays
I’m a physical education teacher and I do not agree with you at all. It is my job to modify activities for every student. It is evey child’s right to be physically educated regardless of physical disabilities, injuries or illness. I would modify for a child with a foot injury just the way I would modify for a child with an amputated leg or a child in a wheelchair. There is the assumption that all we do is run around in PE. I assure you that is not what a proper physical education curriculum is about. We learn skills like throwing, catching, and dribbling. We dance, we do gymnastics and yoga. Everything can be modified. The only injury that prevents students from participating in my classes is a concussion. I had three students with fractured wrists and yes they all fully participated in gymnastics. Everything was modified for them so they could participate safely. It not only frustrates me, but it frustrates the students when they come in with a note excusing them when they and I know they could fully participate in the lesson. Sometimes without modifications. It is the job of parents and doctors to let the PE teacher know what specifically they should not be doing such as running and activities where there is a risk of collision. That way we can get them involved in someway. That is what I do for my own children because it is the child’s right and I have no business taking that away from them.
Thanks for such a valuable comment and I am actually with you on most of it. Like you I am a qualified teacher and my children adore sports. My point was more aimed at the notion that only GP’s can decide when your child is not fit for sport. I feel that parents are being given less responsibility for their children when everyone should be working in a partnership. I do not condone pulling your child out of PE because they have a cold but when my youngest is suffering with her chest for example cross country is not wise. I applaud you for being so responsive to you students needs. We need more teachers like you!
Children with colds or any other airborne disease have no business being at school until they are better, period.
It sounds like this PE teacher thinks he is a doctor. Mine thought the same thing and almost killed me because of it. PE was torture and I was penalized with poor grades and shamed in front of classmates for “not trying hard enough”. My teacher dismissed everything I told him and declared me healthy, because he knew better than both me and my mother. After all, it was his job to know better and suggesting otherwise greatly offended him.
My mother knew that something was wrong, but there was no known cause for my symptoms yet. Had my mother had her way, I’d have been excused from PE and I would not have had a heart attack.
My teacher’s defense? “How was I supposed to know she had this condition?” EXACTLY. He couldn’t have known, so he should not have made the claims that he did and pushed me far beyond my limits.
People act as if depriving some children of PE is an act of child abuse, but do not think anything of their children sitting for nearly 6 hours every weekday. PE cannot mitigate the damage that does to their bodies, nor is PE the only opportunity for children to exercise.
I literally just found out the hard way that a parents note is no longer good enough for the school system. I had the gym coach talk down to my 10 year old daughter saying “her mothers hand written statement wasn’t good enough.” That’s undermining a parents authority and I for one do not appreciate that and refuse to tolerate it. My daughter has bronchitis and asthma acting up. She had an appointment scheduled with her doctor that afternoon but still like I said that wasn’t good enough and it most definitely didn’t take a rocket scientist to see she wasn’t breathing well enough to participate in gym and her cheeks were flushed as well as her heart racing. Her doctor had a fit and wrote her a note excusing her from gym but my child had already paid the ultimate price. This same gym coach has made my daughter walk until she came home with blisters the size of 50 cent pieces on each heal. My daughter went to him and stated “my feet feel as though they are gonna bleed may I please stop walking” and he still insisted she walk . On another occasion my oldest daughter picked my youngest daughter up from school. The gym coach was extremely rude to her and my younger daughter. His character isn’t appropriate to be around children of any age period and I am told he is a preacher to top it off! Smh!??♀️ I’ve seen this man be verbally rude hateful and cruel to my child as well as other children. It’s ridiculous. I have a meeting set for this Friday morning and as I told the school district and the principal it will not be pretty! No gym coach should try and push a child into a full blown asthma attack. No gym coach should work with children when it’s obvious he isn’t happy with his job or just wants to be a over grown bully. His attitude is extremely horrific and exactly why children do not want to participate in gym class.
My goodness what a horribe experience for your daughter. I hope you can get things sorted.