Young minds thrive with exercise

FIT bodies mean fit minds. This old saying seems to have been forgotten in many parental and teaching minds as modern pressures to achieve academic excellence have grown. It’s time to relearn it, because recent research has shown that it is a basic truth.

Researchers from Strathclyde and Dundee universities, in collaboration with teams from Bristol and Georgia in the United States, examined the exercise and schooling records of 5,000 children, comparing how much exercising they did at the age of 11 with their academic performance in English, maths, and science at the ages of 11, 13, 15 and 16.

They found that the more exercise children had taken at age 11, the better they did in all three subjects. Rather intriguingly, girls who exercised more were found to have done particularly better in science subjects.

The danger in this kind of research is that cause and effect can be misunderstood. It may be that children who are more intellectually inquiring are also more prone to enjoy exercise. More research to eliminate this kind of misunderstanding is planned, but in the meantime it does seem to make sense that children who are untroubled by weight problems and are physically active are more likely to be mentally active.

The Scottish Government has set targets for the amount of physical activity school pupils should be undertaking and while most are meeting them, some are not. In any case, this study indicates it is daily exercise rather than one or two big activity periods a week which matters.

More PE and playtime activity, and less time sitting at desks might, odd though it sounds, be the best way to improve exam results.