It was May 1995 that is was decided that along with the help of many other people the

Christchurch Collage of Education would develop a Draft Health and Physical Education
Curriculum Statement (Tasker, G 2003). By 1999 it had become the document in the New
Zealand curriculum for the subject area Health and Physical Education. The overarching
goals of the curriculum can be summed up in two main points. Firstly a set of values we
want our students to have and secondly, the vision of what our students will be like when
they leave school. Health and Physical Education is the perfect way for us to achieve these
two things.

I believe the role of school is to prepare our students to go out into the world to become
good citizens, to get a job and have a family etc. Physical Education and Health is the only
subject that fully covers and prepares our students physically and emotionally for the
outside world. The aim of Health and Physical Education is about the well-being of the
students themselves, as well as the well-being of other people and our society (The New
Zealand Curriculum 2007).

This subject area has four underlying concepts that we teach to contribute to their values
and the vision of what we want our students to be when they leave school. They are
Hauora, Attitudes and Values, the Socio-ecological Perspective and Health Promotion. We
teach these things through personal health and physical development, movement concepts
and motor skills, relationships with other people and healthy communities and
environments.

There are a number of values that the curriculum aims to instil in the students. The first one
is Excellence by aiming high and persevering in the face of difficulties (The New Zealand
Curriculum 2007 pg10). Right from a young age physical education has introduced setting
high goals, challenging yourself and to never give up. We do this by putting the students into
a physical situation that they may not be comfortable in, and they may not achieve their
goal the first time, but we always put a student back into the situation until they succeed in
the activity, whether it is conquering their fear of heights or just finishing a run around the
field with the rest of the class.

Second is innovation, inquiry and curiosity. A lot of the time in physical education we are
getting students to think critically about the situations we put them in, and we never give
the students an answer to a problem. This value is explained as thinking critically, creatively
and reflectively (The New Zealand Curriculum 2007, pg10). In a lot of physical activities
students have to work together to creatively and critically think of how to solve a problem
while working together. We then ask students to reflect on what happened, explain how
they would do it differently and what they would tell someone else if they were to do it
again.

Diversity, throughout many cultures, languages and heritages (The New Zealand Curriculum
2007). This value links to the Health side of Health and Physical Education. In health we
cover many areas from sexuality to depression and drugs. Specifically we try to help
students find themselves and to then understand and accept the many differences we all
have in this world. A part of teaching this value is to show the students that they need to
accept all people. Physical Education is also the perfect opportunity to put a diverse group of
students that are all from different cultures or back grounds into real life situations e.g. a
game of dodge ball and you see a diverse class of people come together to all achieve one
goal. This also links to equity (the next value), by putting all these different students in the
same situation it shows them that everyone is equal and that they need to treat their peers
in the same way.

Next is community and participation. As long as our physical education is taught in the
correct way you will create students who like to work with other students to achieve things
together, this is all about being a community. It also teaches the understanding for students
to use physical education as a way in the future to play sports or do some exercise with
other people in the community, even after they leave school. However this is part that I
acknowledge can be done wrong and can create problems in physical education and our
students. If Health and Physical Education is taught in the wrong way, we begin to get
students who really despise doing physical education and this can affect how they view
doing sports in the future. If we play a game and there isnt the sense of community and not
everyone participating it can affect how students relate to other people. This is an area I
believe we need to be very aware of in Health and Physical education.

I have to acknowledge that Health and Physical education does not contribute very much to
creating the value ecological sustainability which includes caring for the environment (The
New Zealand Curriculum 2007, pg10). We take our students on outdoor activities into our
natural environment e.g. at school I went mountain bike riding in Woodhill forest, this does
create an appreciation for our environment but it doesnt specifically correlate to helping
the environment.

The value of Integrity which involves being honest, responsible and accountable and acting
ethically (The New Zealand Curriculum 2007, pg10) is an important part of Health and
Physical education. Since playing their first game at any age we teach students the rules of a
game and that you cannot break these rules. By not breaking the rules those students are
always keeping integrity in their game, and from there students should be learning to do the
same in their life. By putting students in a physical situation it also means that if they do lose
integrity we can pull them up on this and it reinforces in their mind that you cant get away
with not having integrity.

The final part of the values is to respect themselves others and human rights. This value is a
summary of all the values. In health and physical education we are constantly showing our
students that no matter what the activity, we always need to respect our peers, whether
that is in the classroom, on the field or in our real life situations.

The second area that I believe health and physical education plays an important part in, is
creating the vision for our students when they leave school. The four visions that we want
our students to have as outlined in the New Zealand curriculum are that they are Confident,
Connected, Actively Involved, and Lifelong Learners. These four things link to the values that
we want our students to have because if students have these kinds of values they will be
also close to this vision.

Being connected and actively involved has a big link to physical education because if we put
students into a game together you have them being connected with all types of people and
they are actively involved in this game. Also if we teach physical education and health
correctly we will begin to get students who want to continue sports later in life and they will
do social sports or work at a gym or even throw a ball around with a few mates, which is
putting them into situations again where they are involved and connected with one another.

Having confident students can evolve from health and physical education through very
simple things like students accomplishing something they never thought they could do e.g.
starting a new sport or completing a high ropes course when they have a fear of heights.

Lastly lifelong learners - the curriculum talks about lifelong learners being active seekers,
informed decision makers (The New Zealand Curriculum 2007, pg8). Often Physical
Education puts the students in the place of having to make decisions for themselves, for
example in games, what strategies to use. If we teach this to them for a long period of time
it can become a way of life and natural for students to make decisions in their everyday
lives.

The goal of school is to produce students with these values so that when they have to go off
to university or go and get a job they are prepared for this and ready to take responsibly for
themselves. There was a study done called Vanves (1952) which involved replacing
academic time with physical education, although it didnt change academic grades it did
change the real life problems thats students face like fewer absent students, more
attentiveness in class and fewer disciplinary problems within the school. All of these are the
things that are happening in students everyday lives and become habits when they get
older. If we can stop and break these habits now it will could have a serious impact on how
students behave in the future.

So far I have explained how physical education contributes to our New Zealand students; the
other part to this subject is the health side. Even though we usually teach Health in a class
room it still does the same things towards helping our students. In the last 25 years there
has been a notable change in direction from going from absence of disease to being about
having better wellbeing as a country (Tasker, G 2003). To get a good wellbeing as a country
teaching health can make a major contribution.
From a individualistic perspective, health education is seen as the promotion and eventual
adoption of particular health behaviours for the purposes of preventative health care
(Tasker. G, 2003, pg189)
We need health education in our New Zealand schools to help students understand the need
to stay healthy and live a healthy lifestyle and to understand the benefits of doing this. The
people who helped write the Health and Physical Education curriculum believe that it should
be designed: To improve the social and learning environments of our schools, and to
enhance the health prospects of all students in a changing and challenging twenty first
century (Tasker. G, 2003 Pg 192).
This is the perfect statement to sum up the reason to have Health and Physical education in
our curriculum, it is the only subject that puts students into physical situations and gets
them to make the decisions for them selves. It also addresses real life situations of sexuality,
depression and our physical health, all the things that we cant live in our world without. It is
all about producing students who can take care of their health and others to create a better,
healthy society for us to live in.


Recourses:
Tasker, G. (2003). For whose benefit? The politics of developing a health education
curriculum
The New Zealand Curriculum 2007