The physical education teacher we grew up with is fast being replaced by professionals hired by schools from corporate sports outfits, equipped to analyse body fat, fitness levels, and teach life skills on the field using state-of-the-art equipment
The physical education teacher we grew up with is fast being replaced by professionals hired by schools from corporate sports outfits, equipped to analyse body fat, fitness levels, and teach life skills on the field using state-of-the-art equipment
Four year-old Shaguna screws her eyes shut for a few seconds. Then, opening them, she begins her obstacle course. The petite, hairband-wearing Senior Kindergarten student of Little Angel's School in Sion picks up a ball from a blue bucket, runs a short distance, and drops it into a yellow bucket. She runs back to the blue bucket to pick up another ball and returns to drop it into the second bucket. That done, she jumps into a red hoola hoop lying on the ground and picks it up. Tottering on a leg weakened by illness, Shaguna loses her balance, but rights herself almost immediately. A minute later, she is walking on a narrow plastic bridge. 
Kids Out Of Home or KOOH, recently set up base in Mumbai, and have
begun working with four schools starting this year, including the Lok Seva
School in Pune. Coach Puneet Mehra (in orange tee shirt) trains children
of the primary school. PIC/ Krushal Gosavi
Jameel Khan, her PT teacher, extends his hand, but she brushes it away. It's when she reaches the hoops over which she must jump that she turns to him. Screwing her eyes shut again, she jumps. She doesn't quite cross the hoop, but Khan, a 23 year-old employee of Edusports, a Bengaluru-based school sports company, jumps over the tiny hoop instead.
All three divisions of Senior KG sitting in a circle and waiting patiently for their turn, burst out laughing and Shaguna joins them.
Welcome to period three of Senior KGu00a0--- PT. Fifty minutes of pure fun for the children, smiling teachers happy that the kids are doing something useful with their time, a headmistress marvelling at the change Khan has brought about in some children, including Shaguna, who a year ago, found it tough to walk, stand and keep her balance, and a lithe, young PT teacher, who is sticking to a predetermined lesson plan given to him by his boss.
Started in 2008 by 39 year-old Saumil Majumdar, Edusports is now working with 160 schools around the country, in 50 urban and semi-urban cities, including Sapna, Kambam, Moga, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai.
And while it may seem that this service would come at a premium, Majumdar says the average cost per child for their physical education lessons, marked by well-maintained equipment and lesson plans devised to take into account age-appropriate fitness levels, is anything between Rs 50 to Rs 150 a month.
Another Bengaluru-based company, Leapstart, worked with 10 schools when it opened shop in 2010. This year, their clients have grown to 30 schools, in Kerala, New Delhi and Karnataka. They are also holding the same programme in two government schools on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
Kids Out Of Home or KOOH, recently set up base in Mumbai, and have begun working with four schools starting this year, including the Lok Seva School in Pune, and the DePaul's International School in Mysore.
A growing number of schools around the country are tying up with professional sports outfits to 'outsource' PT classes. While this does not quite signal the disappearance of the portly PT teacher we've all grown up with, it does indicate a clear shift in schools' perspective towards sports, games, and play time.
The move to bring in corporations also indicates an effort to address the gaps in physical education training offered in most schoolsu00a0-- lack of equipment and funding, a focus on trophies rather than the children's physical development, and a pedagogical approach that works through punishment, negative reinforcement, and unengaging drills.
Rev Dr Jose Aikara, who took over as chairman of the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) Board in June, admits, "The state of PT classes is very poor in most schools across the country. In the earlier days, there was little or no encouragement for schools to develop their sports departments. Of late, however, there has been a growing understanding of the need for PT. The ICSE board schools conduct sports meets, and many who have played for our schools, have gone on to represent the state and country."
Aikara, who is also the principal of DePaul's International School, Mysore, has hired the services of 40 year-old Shashikumar Muniyappa, who became a PT instructor in the early '90s after representing Karnataka in basketball tournaments. Muniyappa, and a team of three coaches -- for athletics, basketball and swimming -- have been deputed by Mumbai-based KOOH to DePaul's International.
"The four PT teachers at school will remain. But the KOOH coaches are experts, which means that they will not only enhance the quality of the PT class, but also the students' fitness levels. It will also improve the knowledge of my school's PT department," says Aikara.
Muniyappa, who has worked as a PT teacher in Bengaluru high schools and colleges for close to two decades, says, "The skills of PT teachers are not utilised. They are given disciplinary duties. No one asks them, 'why is this child not running well?' Instead, they will be asked, 'why did the children not walk in a line?' Several times, I was asked to provide disciplinary training, rather than coach students in basketball, although that's what I'm best equipped to do."
Joining a professional school sports company has left Muniyappa happy. "It's provided me a refresher course -- there's a detailed curriculum for each of the seven sports we offer to schools. The curriculum has 54 modules of lesson plans. We have also been taught about sports nutrition, technology, psychology, and equipment," he adds.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that while the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) Guidelines were introduced in the CBSE Board in 2009 to create an assessment system that covers all aspects of a student's life, including Physical Education training, and a CBSE manual published last year offered a detailed account of what a PT teacher should know, there are no guidelines provided to schools about age appropriate physical development.
For that, school sports companies are forced to look to the West for guidelines, which they then modify to suit our context. For instance, Dev Roy, the 38 year-old founder of LeapStart, created a curriculum for different age groups of children, based on the findings of SPARK, an organisation in the United States that conducts research on physical education training methods and benefits. However, he has replaced activities like baseball with active cricket (a version, he points out, in which "no kid is idle on the field"), and modified the callisthenics of the regular PT drill (hands up, hands in front, hands down) with interesting props like a parachute that all the children are made to hold and move.
However, as per the SPARK guidelines, the LeapStart curriculum has five parts -- from kindergarten up to college -- and offers age appropriate activities. For instance, coaches would teach gross and manipulative locomotor skills to children in Kindergarten to Class 2. Students of Class 3 to 6 are introduced to a new sport every month and their skills in these sports are honed.
"We are also very careful about the way we teach. For instance, corporal punishment is out of the question. Also, we don't instruct through negative reinforcement. As a child, what we did on the field mattered less than the line we had to form to go to the playing field. If we were out of line, or didn't turn up in time, we got caned," says Roy.
Roy is seeking to change the mode of teaching PT, even as the PT lesson is fast turning into the new classroom, where concepts take shape, life skills are learnt, and kids are taught to compete only against themselves.
Majumdar tells us how. "In a maths class, if a student isn't getting a concept, the teacher pays attention to him. Whereas, in a PT class, if a student isn't performing well, teachers don't pay attention to him, and focus on the 'good ones' who could then join the school team. It's inverted!" says Majumdar, who intially entered the business to create spaces where children could play, and learn the basic concepts of fitness and skills.
"We push children to compete without training them in the right context about correct skills, physical fitness, age appropriate activity, perseverence and team spirit. It's what you learn on the field, while playing that pulls you through tough times in life and at work," adds Majumdar.
Former national basket ball player, John Chandy, agrees. The 38 year-old graduate of the prestigiousu00a0 International Academy of Sports Science and Technology or AISTS based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is currently working with KOOH and has devised the Balanced Report Card programme that offers each student a complete analysis of their body fat, lean mass, protein and mineral content, among other parameters to judge a child's fitness. This assessment will be conducted four times a year, so that parents can see their child's progress.
They have also tied up with video technology company Dartfish to offer video training equipment to students that are part of the school teams to analyse their game. And while all this may sound fancy, Chandy insists that the average cost per child is barely Rs 200 a month, if the school takes up their Kindergarten to Class 12 programme for a year. None of these sports companies charge the students though.
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"It is up to the school if they want to increase student's fees. Our deal is only with the school," Chandy's colleague, Puneet Mehra, clarifies.
"Our curriculum," says Chandy, "incorporates lessons on the science of sports. We explain concepts of physics and diet through sports, and we've noticed that kids learn better like this. Our aim is to teach children about sports, the right way. Else, he's just getting a tan, doing stupid stuff that doesn't help him."
Elizabeth Pinto, the Headmistress of Little Angel's School, where little Shaguna studies, would agree. "A year ago, some children simply sat around doing nothing during PT. Now, not only are they occupied, they are also following a programme that will ensure they become fitter," she says.
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