The Paro College of Education (PCE) will be introducing a new diploma in sports education and coaching from next year. This is to address the shortage of trained instructors on physical education in primary schools. Till now the college has trained over 70 physical education instructors to provide guidance to students.
A trainer from Singapore, Dr. Sock Miang, said getting children directly involved into sports could have implications like burnout and loss of interest. She said physical education not only prevents this but develops skills, which are useful in their daily lives. “Physical Education is like learning your abc…..its learning the abc of movement, learning the abc of the body, its learning the abc of how do I take good care of myself, how do I enjoy sports,” explains Dr. Miang.
“So we look at physical education, as helping children develop movement for daily living, for recreation. If children can go and play with their friends they learn social skills, they learn psychomotive movement, they learn cognitive decision-making. So PE to us is same as learning English, Mathematics and science,” she added.
Dr. Kesang, the Dean of Research and Industrial Linkages of the College, said that the participants would act as mentors and guides to the students of the diploma programme while in the field. He said physical education is still uncommon in most schools at the moment. Besides shortage of trained teachers, he said the subject is undervalued by most.
“As of now from our experience we have come to know schools are not very serious with this implementation of health and physical education in their schools although there is a directive from the ministry of education. In the past, it really depended on the school principals. Some principals understood the benefits of the programme and they started taking it serious and implemented it to a certain extent. But in some schools some principals find it difficult to understand and they have neglected it, they don’t have it in their time tables,” added the Dean.
