Sport Opens School

Background Sport Opens School (SOS) was a project based on the crucial role that physical education (PE) at school can play in enhancing young people’s health and wellbeing, transferring social values and improving life skills. SOS made a connection between the societal role of sport, the development of key competences in students, and the presence of well-qualified PE teachers, as necessary conditions to young people’s positive development. Indeed, the project major objectives were: Objectives Creating a PE teaching module in high school more engaging which combined physical activity with the teaching of sports ethics and life skillsDeveloping life and employability skills in young people via PETraining PE teachers to implement this teaching module and participate in its development Measuring its efficacy, cost-effectiveness and applicability to any European high schoolRepositioning the relevance of PE to improve its perception on and off school Implementation SOS involved an interdisciplinary team of trainers, who developed a preliminary research necessary to build the 15 theoretical and practical sheets composing the new PE teaching module. The implementation of the module in 4 European high schools led to its amendment thanks to the constant monitoring of the trainers and the direct participation of the students and PE teachers, who were not only the project beneficiaries, but also active actors in the project development. Achievements Hence, we have built an innovative teaching module for delivering PE classes in high school. Its added value is to have a threefold purpose and cover 3 main topics: health, fair play/integrity and life skills. It is interdisciplinary and resulting from a transnational and bottom-up approach, which guarantees its transferability and sustainability. The activities and all the steps to be followed to implement the PE module in other schools or sport organisations are included in the SOS Toolkit.