ABSTRACT
The responsibility of schools to promote health has heightened in recent decades due to escalating concerns about young people’s health and health behaviours, including physical activity levels. This has increased the expectation on Physical Education (PE) to play a leading role in promoting active lifestyles, which has become a prominent theme in PE curricula globally. Challenges that schools face in effectively contributing to public health include them having little or no influence on key factors affecting young people’s health and limited capacity to pursue additional health outcomes. There is also uncertainty about the level of responsibility PE should accept for health outcomes and concerns about the expression of health in PE, which is not helped by the limited attention afforded to health promotion in teachers’ professional development. A whole-school approach to health can help schools meet health-related expectations and PE teachers are well placed to support school-wide initiatives. Within this, active cross-curricular links can improve the coherence and effectiveness of health-related learning, and activity breaks can improve students’ concentration and behaviour. Schools can also make connections with national health-promoting initiatives, incorporate active pedagogies and pursue research-informed pedagogical approaches to promoting health within PE to enhance students’ health-related learning and physical activity behaviours.
