Stephen Phillips reports on how American schools are tackling pupils’ obesity

Texas, battling against an epidemic of child obesity, has reinstated compulsory PE in primary schools.

The ruling, approved 13 to 2 by the state’s board of education, will require 2 million children to go to the gym for at least 135 minutes a week.

Board member Richard Watson said the reintroduction of PE - phased out in 1995 to make way for extra academic lessons - was sparked by an “overwhelming problem with obesity among elementary school-age children”.

One in four American schoolchildren attends no PE classes, according to P.E.4LIFE, a Washington-based group that lobbies for gym lessons.

Half of Texas’s nine-year-old Hispanic boys and black girls are overweight, according to the state’s department of health.

The programme is designed to catch children young, before it is too late, said Texas health commissioner Eduardo Sanchez. Half the new childhood diabetes cases have adult-onset diabetes - linked to an unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle - as opposed to the genetic form of the disease normally seen in the young, said Sanchez.

Teachers are leading offensives to fight the flab across the United States, which has the world’s most acute childhood obesity problem.

Education authorities in Pennsylvania and Florida began sending letters to parents of overweight pupils last September, alerting them to the health risks.

After mass screenings of pupils’ weight, East Penn school district, just outside Philadelphia, has sent out 380 confidential letters advising parents to consult a doctor about their children’s weight.

Reaction to the delicately worded letters was initially hostile, and parents were resentful of the intrusion, said the director of pupil personnel services, George Ziolkowski. But the second wave of responses was more receptive. “Parents said thank you, and that they needed a push,” he said.

The proportion of overweight US children and adolescents has more than doubled since the late 1970s to over 13 per cent, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

California schools, where 77 percent of pupils recently failed the state’s fitness test, are turning to yoga to keep pupils in trim and ease classroom discipline problems.

Seven San Francisco public schools have embraced the athletic posture and breathing techniques, and 60 yoga teachers work in city classrooms.

“As many as 110 kids are in the gym warming up with breathing exercises and stretches,” said Phyllis Camp, who teaches yoga at inner-city James Lick middle school. “In the morning, when teachers want to connect with rowdy pupils we have a yoga break and, boom, they are in control.”