2 out of 5 kids have unhealthy BMI

Most Indian schools fail to ensure adequate play time and fitness regimes for students, according to a survey, which found that two out of five school-going children don't have a healthy body mass index (BMI) and 50% of children lack adequate lower body strength.
Some schools were found to offer three or more physical education periods per week while most offer just two.The study found that students from schools which offer more than three periods are healthier. The survey by EduSports covered 1.48 lakh students from across 87 cities and 26 states in the academic year 2014-15. EduSports is India's first physical education and school sports enterprise. They tested students on sprint capacity, flexibility, upper body strength, abdominal strength and BMI.
Sharing the sixth annual survey exclusively with TOI, Saumil Majmudar, CEO of EduSports, said the annual survey has become more representative as there is significant increase in number of schools, cities and states where study was conducted and it broadly covers public schools in urban and semiurban localities.
The study revealed that schools which set aside more time for sports and physical education activities tend to have comparatively healthier students. To compare the effects of running a structured and age appropriate sports physical education programme in a school, 23,889 students from 80 schools who had such programmes were studied for over 24 months. The results were compared with schools running a general sports programme (27,281 kids from 85 schools). It was seen that schools from the first category showed a significant improvement across fitness parameters compared to schools which ran a general sports programme.
"Running, jumping and jogging are element of sports which should be adopted very easily in curriculum for junior classes.PE doesn't have to be only in physical training period but also during English and mathematics classes which will encourage the children to be more active. Mathematics is not bound to your textbooks but it is a practical science you can use in everything. Incorporating PE gives a very wholesome attitude to subjects and sports. I want my students to pick up a specific sports only after Class V and till then they should strengthen their bodies, hand-eye coordination and lung capacity and find out their strength," said Anuradha Joshi, principal, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Delhi.
"The sample for the study is the typical lower, middle and upper middle class child whose parents are trying to balance good academics with extracurricular exposure given the constraints of space, time and logistic issues. Therefore, the kind of school we send our kids to will determine their fitness to a large extent..." Majmudar said.