Health and Physical Education

Attitudes and Motivation
The national monitoring assessment programme recognises the impact of attitudinal and motivational factors on student achievement in individual assessment tasks. Students' attitudes, interests and liking for a subject have a strong bearing on progress and learning outcomes. Students are influenced and shaped by the quality and style of curriculum delivery, the choice of content and the suitability of resources. Other important factors influencing students' achievements are the expectations and support of significant people in their lives, the opportunities and experiences they have in and out of school, and the extent to which they have feelings of personal success and capability.

Health and Physical Education Surveys
The national monitoring health and physical education surveys sought information from students about their curriculum preferences and their perceptions of their achievement. Students were also asked about their involvement in health and physical education activities within school and beyond. The surveys were administered to both year 4 and year 8 students in groups of four students, with most questions requiring short written answers and others a written response. Instructions and questions were read to year 4 students, and teacher help with reading was provided where requested by year 8 students.

There are numerous research questions that could be asked when investigating student attitudes and engagement. In national monitoring it has been necessary to focus on a few key questions that give an overall impression of how students view health and physical education as school, home and community activities.

HEALTH SURVEY
The health survey included one item which asked students to indicate preferred and disliked health activities at school, four items which invited students to record a rating response, and five items which sought open-ended responses. Responses to the open-ended items are not reported here.

The students were presented with a list of thirteen health activities and asked which they liked doing most at school. They were invited to tick up to three activities. They were also asked to indicate activities that they did not like doing at school, by putting crosses alongside up to three activities. Their responses are shown below.

Caring for others was popular at year 4 level, but not at year 8. Learning about how my body works was well supported, but was also the most disliked activity at year 8 level.

Knowing about illnesses and diseases produced a particularly polarised response (numerous positive and negative responses), with greater support at year 8 level.

Responses to the four rating items are presented in separate tables for year 4 students and year 8 students. As has been the pattern in NEMP surveys for most other curriculum areas, a substantially lower percentage of year 8 students than year 4 students gave highly positive ratings to learning about health in school (questions 1 and 4). Both year 4 and year 8 students were, however, very positive about the usefulness of learning about health (question 2). The responses to question 4 indicated that only 40 percent of year 4 students and 31 percent of year 8 students believed their class did things that helped them learn about health "lots" or "quite a lot".

PHYSICAL EDUCATION SURVEY
The physical education survey included one item which allowed students to indicate their favourite curriculum areas, another which asked them to indicate preferred and disliked physical education activities at school, and nine which invited them to record a rating response. There were also seven items, for which results are not reported here, that invited students to write open-ended responses.

The students were first asked to select their three favourite school subjects from a list of twelve subjects. Among the year 4 students, art was the most popular subject, listed as first, second or third choice by 73 percent of year 4 students. Physical education came second (68 percent), mathematics third (37 percent), music and reading fourth equal (24 percent), and science sixth (20 percent). Health was in last place (2 percent). Among the year 8 students, physical education was first (69 percent), art second (47 percent), technology third (39 percent), mathematics fourth (30 percent), science fifth (23 percent), and music sixth (29 percent). Health was again last (2 percent).

The students were then presented with a list of fifteen activities which they might do in physical education at school, and were asked to tick up to three activities which they most like to do and to put crosses alongside up to three activities which they don't like doing. The responses are shown below, in five clusters. Within clusters, the activities are ordered from most to least popular for year 4 students.

Activity	y4 % responses		y8 % responses
Activity	like	dislike	like	dislike
Activity swimming/aquatics	53	4	34	10
ball activities	40	10	43	5
gymnastics	33	16	19	26
athletics	20	9	19	13
outdoor education	16	11	20	6
fitness	21	20	8	27
dance	16	37	16	37
te reo kori (Mäori activities)	5	46	4	34
school sports days	26	8	26	10
class games	19	8	25	4
doing things in teams	7	5	20	1
doing things on your own	4	23	3	20
playing for fun (not to win)	11	9	21	2
playing to win	9	17	9	15
learning new skills	5	7	5	7

The notable differences between year 4 and year 8 responses are the lower enthusiasm of year 8 students for swimming, gymnastics and fitness activities, and their higher enthusiasm for doing things in teams and playing for fun.

Responses to the 9 rating items are presented below in separate tables for year 4 students and year 8 students. The results show that year 8 students were as enthusiastic as year 4 students about physical education. In most other curriculum areas assessed in NEMP, enthusiasm has declined markedly from year 4 to year 8. Year 8 students were less positive (perhaps more realistic) than year 4 students about how good they were at physical education, and about how good others thought that they were. Year 8 students reported a little more vigorous physical activity than year 4 students over the day preceding the survey. Between 30 and 40 percent of students at both levels stated that they didn't know how good their teacher thought they were at physical education.

YEAR 4 STUDENTS HEALTH SURVEY	% responses

1. How much do you like doing health at school?	51	34	9	6
2. Do you think learning about health is useful to you at school and out of school?	14	27	51	8
3. How do you feel about learning about more health as you get older?	61	27	7	5
	lots	quite a lot	sometimes	never
4. How often does your class do things that help you learn about health?	15	25	55	5

YEAR 8 STUDENTS HEALTH SURVEY	% responses

1. How much do you like doing health at school?	22	58	16	5
2. Do you think learning about health is useful to you at school and out of school?	64	31	4	1
3. How do you feel about learning about more health as you get older?	31	51	13	5
	lots	quite a lot	sometimes	never
4. How often does your class do things that help you learn about health?	9	22	66	3

YEAR 4 PHYSICAL EDUCATION SURVEY	% responses
					don't know
1. How much do you like doing PE at school?	74	21	3	2
		more	about the same	less
2. Would you like to do more PE or less PE at school?		71	22	7
4. How good do you think you are at PE?	55	32	4	1	8
5. How good does your family think you are at PE?	40	23	5	1	31
6. How do you feel about doing things in PE you haven't tried before?	73	10	2	2	13
7. How much do you like doing PE in your own time (not at school)?	44	40	12	4
8. Do you want to keep learning PE when you are older?	64	22	7	7
		yes	maybe / notsure	no
9. How much vigourous physical activity have you since this time yesterday?		58	37	5
	<15 mins	16-30 mins	31-45 mins	46-60 mins	>60 mins
9. How much vigourous physical activity have you since this time yesterday?	29	26	4	20	22

YEAR 8 PHYSICAL EDUCATION SURVEY	% responses
					don't know
1. How much do you like doing PE at school?	68	25	6	1
		more	about the same	less
2. Would you like to do more PE or less PE at school?		65	30	5
4. How good do you think you are at PE?	31	54	7	1	7
5. How good does your family think you are at PE?	22	33	5	1	39
6. How do you feel about doing things in PE you haven't tried before?	46	26	5	1	22
7. How much do you like doing PE in your own time (not at school)?	46	43	10	1
8. Do you want to keep learning PE when you are older?	54	34	10	2
		yes	maybe / notsure	no
9. How much vigourous physical activity have you since this time yesterday?		62	35	3
	<15 mins	16-30 mins	31-45 mins	46-60 mins	>60 mins
9. How much vigourous physical activity have you since this time yesterday?	19	20	9	23	29

	33k	Health Survey 1MB
		Physical Ed. Survey 2.4MBb