Hungarian School Sport Federation (HSSF) is the biggest civil organisation in the field of youth sport and education in Hungary.
The Federation, founded in 1987, went through a major transformation in 2012, extending its mission beyond school sport: HSSF decided to support teachers to implement quality physical education, and to promote health-conscious, future-oriented lifestyle through regular physical education and fitness assessment. The mission of our organisation is therefore significantly wider today than it was before: the main goal is to increase the number of children who are actively involved in physical activity programmes and promote the concept of health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) and grassroots sport.
HSSF also participates in promoting values like volunteering and social integration through physical activity. To effectively follow these goals, we are also keen to further strengthen our international activities. Today, HSSF is member of International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA), Federation Internationale d’Education Physique (FIEP), European Physical Education Association (EUPEA) and International School Sport Federation (ISF). The representative of HSSF also acts as national focal point for HEPA. In the last years HSSF became a key actor in shaping EU policy documents and Europe-wide cooperations. With the help of our partners we have established a proposal for the European Framework of Quality Physical Education, and the content for a possible field of key-competence, called “health-conscious, future-oriented life management”, which also appeared in 2018 as a development field in the reference framework on key competences of the European Parliament and the Council.
Meanwhile, HSSF managed to build up a brand-new pan-European event on the basis of Hungarian School Sport Day, which ‒ since 2017 ‒ is a key event of ISCA’s Now We Move Campaign and the European Week of Sport, the initiative of the European Commission. By 2018, HSSF and its partners reached 30 European countries with the European School Sport Day® (ESSD) and are committed to further develop the program at international level in the next years.
Beside these activities, HSSF keeps regular contact with almost every single Hungarian public school and approximately 8,000 physical education teachers through its members. Each year, the Federation organises the unique, talent management programme and school sport competition, the Student Olympics, which has an outstanding role in the public education system since decades. Every year, approximately 150,000 students are participating in our sport events through nearly 300,000 entries. Beyond children and teachers, policy makers are also targeted by our activities, as we are actively advocating to ensure the Hungarian state’s involvement in promoting HEPA and grassroots sport. Colleagues of ours also participated in the development of the Hungarian National Core Curriculum and the frame curricula for physical education. Despite these diverse activities, the federation’s philosophy remains simple: we shall establish the opportunity for all children to participate in sports beyond school P.E., and we shall promote physical activity as a part of the daily routine.
The Federation promotes P.E. and school sports as activities that shall not be the privilege of the most talented ones, but opportunities for everyone to establish a physically active life. Three years ago, HSSF started a process to embed a new programme into the public education system that focuses on fundamental movement skills, physical literacy and multisport perspectives. Our idea was to create alternative curricula as part of daily physical education with a special focus on grassroots sport. Today we are already working together with four national sport associations.
Based on the multiple positive affirmations, HSSF continues to expand its commitment to promote quality P.E., HEPA, and the concept of volunteering and social inclusion through sport in new European projects: we’re in the middle of designing a new European trademark system for sport-minded schools.
In 2016, we successfully hosted the International School Sport Federation’s (ISF) World Schools’ Championships (WSC) in cross-country, and – in 2017 – we were the organisers of the swimming WSC as well. In 2018, HSSF won the right to host the 2019 ISF Combat Games.
In addition to all these, HSSF is proud to present the third edition of our biannual international conference on quality physical education in November 2018, abbreviated as HIPE.