The assumption that the sports council’s planned for three weekly 40-minute periods of physical education in primary can be introduced without losing another element of the 5-14 programme was challenged by North Lanarkshire’s director.
“Primaries do not need millions of peripatetic teachers,” Michael O’Neill told one of a series of seminars ahead of the Holyrood elections. But Kim Nicholl, the SNP’s sports spokeswoman and a former primary PE teacher, said regular PE was possible if the will was there.
Graeme Walker, principal PE teacher at Loudoun Academy, East Ayrshire, warned that fitness levels among pupils entering secondary school were “poor”.