Background

Dirk Fris has worked for the municipality of Hoorn for almost 30 years. At the time, he started setting up community sports activities. Over the past three decades, Hoorn has grown from a city of approximately 17,000 inhabitants to one with around 75,000 inhabitants today. After ten years of community sports activities, Fris realised that if you focus on children, this can be managed more effectively through schools than through community work. “At that time, general teachers taught physical education, and there were no PE teachers working at primary schools. As a result, the children’s level of physical activity in Hoorn was appalling.” In order to turn the tide together with the school boards and improve the quality of physical education, Fris started working as a physical activity consultant in 2005. At the same time, he wanted to incorporate sports participation initiatives.

There are now 28 PE teachers at 34 primary school locations in Hoorn, teaching at all primary schools in Hoorn and employed by the school boards. All teachers have several additional hours for physical activity management. During these hours, which are funded by the municipality, they can fulfil a role in promoting sports participation at the school, with particular attention paid to children who do little physical activity, have motor development delays or are overweight. The 28 PE teachers/physical activity managers are divided among neighbourhood teams, which assess what is needed in each neighbourhood.

Appealing study trip

Fris is taking part in the Dynamic School Day Study Trip to Denmark together with three PE teachers/physical activity managers, representing three school boards: public education, private education and special education. Fris explains why the study trip appealed to him: “Everything this trip is about is part of my work: physical education, the active school, extracurricular activities, physical activity alongside PE lessons, and cooperation with sports clubs. All these areas present challenges: how do you deal with coaching programmes at sports clubs, how do you organise clinics, how do you promote sports participation through the sports club, and what additional opportunities can you offer children who ‘deviate’ from the usual pattern of physical activity?”

In Denmark, the three PE teachers/physical activity managers must create a presentation/film that they will share throughout Hoorn upon their return. “That means both with politicians and with school boards and our own colleagues.”

Fris is particularly curious about how Denmark has addressed these issues. “I am thinking, for example, of facilities, but also of how physical activity alongside PE lessons has been incorporated into the curriculum. We now use the Beweeg Wijs programme at half of the schools in Hoorn, developed by a PE teacher in Hoorn. This intervention is based on the idea that children should also engage in genuinely effective physical activity every day during the 25 minutes they spend outside.”

Eye-opener

Fris believes that ‘Denmark’ will certainly be an eye-opener in several respects. “That is also because our municipality-wide approach in the Netherlands is quite unique, meaning that we have no benchmark against which to compare ourselves. Now we will have one. In recent years, we have already made up significant ground in Hoorn. Now we hope to take the next step.”

Moreover, the knowledge can be applied in practice. “For example, we are working on the construction of an integrated child centre for special education, where several schools will be merged and where children will attend from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I hope we will gain inspiration and practical tools in Denmark to shape this properly.”

Photo: Almost the complete Hoorn physical activity management team. Back row, far right: Dirk Fris.