New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has planned to introduce a streamlined and well-designed Health and Physical Education (HPE) Programme to mainstream health and physical education in schools, especially for students of class 9 to 10. This programme will be introduced from next session and will be compulsory for all affiliated schools of the Board.

During this period, it will be compulsory for students to go to the playground and engage in any of the listed physical activities. They will also receive grades according to their performance.

“CBSE has decided to mainstream Health and Physical Education for classes 9 to 12 with the aim of holistic development of the child, leading to a well-balanced individual in all walks of life,” said a statement from the Board.

According to the Board, good health is often a state of physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

According to a study, India had the second highest number of obese children in the world as of June 2017, with 1.44 crore children weighing excess. Unfortunately, most students ignore games periods in school, choosing to spend time gossiping with friends instead.

However, HPE will be different from Physical Education (PE) academic elective which is offered to class 10 and 12 students.

“Earlier, there used to be two co-scholastic areas — Health and Physical Education and Work Education. Now the two have been merged and the total periods allocated for the two will be used for HPE. This will ensure that schools are under no pressure of adjusting the time tables at the cost of academic subjects,” the official said.

“The whole process of HPE will be school-based and will be evaluated and implemented by school teachers only. The marks or grades will have to be submitted by schools on the CBSE website,” the official added.

While participation in HPE and assessment will be mandatory to be eligible for appearing in Board exams of class 10 and 12, the marks will not be added in the final exams.

Schools will also not be required to have only Physical Education teachers for conducting the period.

Keeping this in view, CBSE has asked schools that while preparing time-table for session 2018-19, one period every day may be reserved for Health and Physical Education especially for class 9 to 12 from session 2018-19 onwards.

It also said the transactional strategies, detailed guidelines and methodology for administering Health and Physical Education to students will be available on CBSE website shortly.

There are 19,316 schools in India and 211 schools in 25 foreign countries are affiliated with the Board.