There are 400,000 children who are overweight in the Netherlands. That number has increased significantly in recent years. One of the causes is that children do not exercise enough. The National Expertise Centre for the Curriculum (SLO) therefore included ‘daily physical activity’ in the attainment targets for primary education. Two days before those attainment targets were finalised—after 1.5 years of meetings—the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science suddenly scrapped the provision.
For neuropsychologist Erik Scherder, removing the plan to make physical activity at school compulsory was the last straw. He has been focusing on physical inactivity among children for years. “There are now five-year-old children with type 2 diabetes,” he says. “It used to be a disease of old age. Physical inactivity is a pandemic.”
Since last year, Scherder has made several attempts to have ‘physical activity throughout the day’ reinstated in the attainment targets for primary education. Ultimately, together with Joop Alberda (former coach of the Dutch national volleyball team) and Mirjam Sombroek (professor of health law at Leiden University), he managed to sit down with the ministry. But the conversation was fruitless. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science sees no reason to reinstate the attainment target in question.
Meanwhile, advocacy organisation Defence for Children, which campaigns for children’s rights in the Netherlands, has also joined the cause. Managing director Carrie van der Kroon: “We are now on a mission together. Children have a right to play, to health and to development. Those rights are at stake. Childhood is incredibly short; we have no time to lose.”
Scherder: “You have to stand up for all children in the Netherlands. And if you want to do that, you will, to put it rather bluntly, have to require schools to do so.”
In the podcast Rennen op de gang, Pointer follows Erik Scherder’s mission, as well as that of Nick Keijser, who teaches physical education according to the dynamic school day—the ideal envisioned by Scherder. In the podcast, Daan (8) and Duuk (11) wage their own battle against the kilos. Listen here to the radio broadcast Beweeg of je leven, in which the podcast series Rennen in de gang is launched.