Schools are more likely to offer students 150 minutes of physical education per week if located in a state or district that mandates that level of P.E., according to a published online this month in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
The 150-minute recommendation comes from the National Association of Sport and Physical Education. According to the study, less than 20 percent of 3rd graders were offered that amount in the 2007-08 school year.
Researchers discovered that if a school was in a state or district requiring 150 minutes of physical education per week, that school was more than twice as likely to offer that level of P.E. Of the 1,761 schools in the study, 17.9 percent of them offered the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of physical education per week.
