ABSTRACT
The National Association of Sports and Physical Education recommends at least 150 minutes a week of structured physical education (PE) in the schools. As a partial response to what looked like an epidemic of overweight children, Hungary introduced daily physical education requirements for the school year 2012–2013. Hungarian concerns about youth fitness date at least to the 1930s, but the amount of school time devoted to physical education has always been less than what is recommended by various agencies and reports. A recurring issue in Hungary and elsewhere is that physical education is intended to serve three related purposes: healthy development and physical fitness, personality development and social inclusion, and "talent care". The implementation of the new policy went forward without consideration of whether the physical education infrastructure could support it. Through various fits and starts, a program of mandatory daily PE in Hungary's public schools was initiated in 2012–2013.
