Marks drop as kids fail fitness test

GETTING students to exercise more might not just address obesity issues, but also improve their grades.

A US study found physically fit students scored higher in tests than their less fit peers.

Test scores dropped more than one point for each extra minute it took middle and high school students to complete a 1600m run/walk fitness test, according to Dr William J McCarthy and colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles.

For optimal brain function "it's good to be both aerobically fit and to have a healthy body shape", Dr McCarthy said.

Dr McCarthy's team compared physical fitness and body weight measures with scores on California's standardised maths, reading, and language tests among 749 fifth-graders, 761 seventh-graders, and 479 ninth-graders who attended schools between 2002 and 2003.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
About half of the students were girls, 60 per cent were white, 26 per cent were of Hispanic ethnicity, and about 7 per cent each were African American and Asian/Pacific Islander.

Almost 32 per cent of the students were overweight and about 28 per cent were obese, the researchers reported in The Journal of Pediatrics.

The researchers estimated students' aerobic fitness according to their times on a flat track.

With a 15-minute maximum allowed time to complete the test, the boys averaged slightly less than 10 minutes, while the girls averaged a little less than 11 minutes.

Mr McCarthy's team found that nearly two-thirds of the students (65 per cent) fell below the state fitness standard for their age and gender.

Compared with these students, students who met or exceeded fitness standards had higher average test scores.

Allowing for age, social and economic status, gender, ethnicity, and body size did not significantly alter this association.

Compared with students of desirable weight, overweight and obese students also scored significantly lower on tests, the researchers found.

MY COMMENT:

Research found that fitness can ensure grade improvement.

From what everyone knew, fitness can bring health, but now fitness helps students to achieve higher score! Will it encourage more students to exercise more?

It is a healthy movement anyway, but the motivation is different now. People may think of encouraging their kids to exercise in order to place their children on a better grade. Education is now related to health.

What do you think?