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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Physical Education and Pedagogy
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1543771
This article is part of the Research Topic Schools as an arena for health-promoting physical activity View all 17 articles
The Open Gyman Active (Lunch)Time Offering at All-Day Schools
Provisionally accepted- 1 Zurich University of Teacher Education, Zürich, Switzerland
- 2 Sports Office City of Zurich, Competence Center Physical Education, Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
The implementation of ‘all-day schools’ (schools with extended educational programmes) provides pupils with the opportunity to engage in a multitude of different activities and learning contexts throughout the day, in addition to their core, compulsory curriculum. These activities may include a diverse range of sports-oriented activities at regular intervals throughout the school day and are accessible to all pupils, irrespective of gender and socio-cultural background. In the context of the project, "Sport in the School Environment” various extended physical activity programmes were implemented and evaluated in 14 primary all-day schools in Zurich (Switzerland) between 2019 and 2021. This article focuses on the extended pedagogical physical activity of the ‘open gym,’ a free physical activity programme during the lunch break in all-day schools and examines how the open gym is utilised by different groups of pupils in relation to gender and socio-cultural background. Data from 401 second-grade pupils were collected using a standardised questionnaire. The participation of pupils in the different programmes was analysed using descriptive statistics, and the relation between the programmes and the socio-cultural background of the pupils was determined by a chi-square test for nonparametric data. Overall, 30-40% of the children participated in different extended educational programmes, with boys participating more frequently than girls. The various activities however, also engaged girls and increased their participation. The initial findings indicate that the pupils made active use of the open gym, with a higher frequency of attendance among boys compared to girls. The results indicate that the open gym is a significantly utilised programme (37% of children participated) and is frequently accessed especially by boys from a variety of different socio-cultural backgrounds.
Keywords: All-day schools, Physical activities, Health Promotion, open gym, extended education, quality extracurricular offer
Received: 11 Dec 2024; Accepted: 11 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ferrari, Schuler, Kress, Bretz and Niederberger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ilaria Ferrari, Zurich University of Teacher Education, Zürich, Switzerland
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