How did you celebrate National HPE Day 2021?

Celebrated this year on 1 September, Health & Physical Education (HPE) Day is a nationwide initiative highlighting the importance of HPE in the Australian Curriculum, and its influence on the lifelong learning and development of healthy behaviours in our children. The theme ‘Good for Children, Good for Schools and Good for Communities’ is good for everyone!

With Australian school children’s physical activity levels ranking among the lowest globally, it is estimated there will be $88 billion additional costs to the Australian economy in the ten-year period from 2015 to 2025 if no action is taken to slow the rise of obesity.

Schools and teachers play a critical role in teaching Australian children the benefits of leading an active and healthy lifestyle. Along with parents, the community and government, the obesity trend line can be changed. To help reverse the trend, we need to ensure that quality HPE is being delivered into our primary and secondary schools.

Parents and caregivers also play an important role in promoting an active lifestyle for their children and encouraging good habits that can stay with them for the rest of their life. Especially now as children are adapting to life impacted by lockdowns, National HPE Day is a great way to raise awareness of, and advocate for, a greater HPE focus from home or wherever you may be.

Fresh ideas from our HPE Staffroom event

Last Wednesday 25 August at our most recent HPE Staffroom event, over 40 members of the Victorian HPE community joined us to bounce around ideas for National HPE Day. Two breakout rooms, facilitated by Justine Bowers from Mentone Secondary Girls College and Melissa Laird from Life Saving Victoria, shared not only what was happening in a school setting for National HPE Day, but also how our community providers can support physical education practically in a classroom setting.

We thank both Justine and Melissa for stepping up into this new way of supporting, sharing and advocating for high quality HPE for our students and greater communities. Take a look at what we discussed via this padlet >>

So how did you celebrate?

Now, we'd love to hear more about what did take place on the scheduled HPE Day (Wednesday 1st September). What did you embed remotely and how did it go? We'd love to hear what you did!

Also, if you're keen, it would be awesome if you can share your name and your school to your contribution as we would really like to form a working party group who can support delivery of an even better HPE day celebrated in Victoria next year.

Please feel free to add to the padlet below >>

Need support to deliver quality HPE? Please get in touch with us!