"Awkward", "anxious", "embarrassed", “worried”, “alone”, “unhappy” : Is PE working for teenage girls?

In my role as a mentor for OUR GOAL CIC , I work with teenage girls who are disengaging with PE. These might be the girls who skip PE lessons, don’t bring their PE kit in to school, or skip school entirely on a day when they have PE. I work with the girls for one hour a week on a long-term basis to co-construct a programme with them which empowers them to be active. The overriding goal of the mentoring programme is to boost girls’ physical and mental health and wellbeing by re-engaging them with physical activity.

The title of this article has come from a session I did earlier this year with a group of year nine girls. We were about to design a five-week physical activity programme, and I wanted to be sure that in doing so, we were differentiating our sessions from traditional PE, because the girls had made it clear to me how they felt about PE.

 We talked a lot about the different elements of PE: the class size, the space, the activities, the sets, the kit, the timetabling, the changing rooms. My final question to the girls was “How does PE make you feel?” and their responses were “Awkward”, “Anxious”, “Embarrassed”, “Worried”, “Alone”, and “Unhappy”. That’s not just a case of me picking out the negative words, there were no positives.

They said they felt “awkward” when they weren’t sure how to do an activity or sport. “Anxious” when they felt like others were looking at them and judging them. “Embarrassed” when they had to get changed. “Worried” when they had to perform in front of others. “Alone” when they were in a group without friends, and “unhappy” in general in PE.

It's such a sad situation. For some girls, especially teenage girls who don’t take part in sport outside of school, PE may be the only opportunity they have to be active all week, so something needs to change. PE must be designed and delivered with the changing needs of teenage girls in mind. What has always worked in the past will not always work in the future and is not working for too many right now. The world in which teenage girls are growing up in is immeasurably different to previous generations, and PE needs to take this into account. In their 2023 edition of the annual Girls Active survey, the Youth Sport Trust found that only 64% of girls enjoyed PE, compared to 74% in 2016. That’s a 10% decrease in less than 10 years.

Youth mental health has declined in recent years, in part due to the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and social media. And yet we know that sport and physical activity have the power to combat this decline. So, it is imperative that we work with girls to ensure we are delivering PE, sport, and physical activity sessions which are creating safe spaces and meeting their needs as teenage girls in our world today.

Making these changes is not the sole responsibility of the PE teachers, I believe a whole cultural and structural shift is needed in the way PE is designed and delivered, a way that listens to female students and responds to their needs, so that PE can continue to serve its purpose to get children active and in turn, to boost their mental and physical health and wellbeing.

 #girls #active #PE #ourgoal