European Physical Activity Label for Schools -EUPALS
The European Physical Activity Label for Schools (EU-PALS) project was aimed at establishing a European physical activity label – the Moving Schools Award – that has been developed to promote the importance of high-quality provision of inclusive physical activity, physical education and sport for all young people and to recognize excellence. It has been established as a direct response to the EU’s objective of motivating all member states to emphasize the importance of quality physical education and provide the opportunity for all students to be active during and beyond the school day.This pan-European Award, the Moving Schools Award, provides a unified tool for all the EU countries and establish a network of national coordinators and schools who are dedicated in the field of physical activity promotion and have the capability to intervene on school and national level. This European network under one label is inspiring schools and children around the continent to be more active and move in the same direction towards eradicating inequalities in access to adequate physical activity. This is about taking schools on a journey and linking them and helping them to collaborate.The project conceptualized the base of existing evaluation systems applied in some of the European countries and aimed to explore the diversity of such systems on a scientific basis finding a common ground without being overly general. The scientific methods of the analysis and meta-analysis as basis of development were innovative in the dimension of EU Sport aiming at developing a holistic approach to help schools tackle general physical inactivity and provide up to date knowledge and aspects on what they can do for improvement. The most important innovative aspect of the project was though that by making the different settings of the European countries comparable, the development created a common evaluation system, the “lingua franca” of physical activity in the continent.The Moving Schools Award is an online self-assessment tool that has been developed to help schools identify areas for development in three different dimensions and involves indicators from three neighboring fields:
- physical education in schools (seen as an educational course and part of the curriculum), from the quality P.E. perspective;
- extracurricular physical activity (all physical activity settings in schools; active learning, active recesses, active transportation, active learning, learning through/with/in movement, etc.);
- school sport (competitive and non-competitive intra- and/or extramural sport events).
The Award aims to unite schools across all 28 member states and beyond in one movement to promote and recognize the importance of providing high quality physical activity, physical education and school sport for all their students. The award encourages schools to perform self-assessment, look for ways to comply, seek assistance, and therefore internalize the value system of the sport-minded schools.Schools that are dedicated to tackle physical inactivity will be motivated to have their efforts recognized during the evaluation in the award system, which will hopefully result in improving and developing quality and quantity of school sport, physical education and extracurricular physical activity programs.The objective of the project is reached through the increased participation of pupils in all three dimensions from all the participating schools in Europe.
Project website:
