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education equipment (Department of Education and Skills School Building Unit, 2010).
Many schools have come to depend on parents’ and children’s fundraising efforts as
well as ‘token-collecting’ from local supermarket initiatives to supply the materials
required, to implement, the physical education curriculum. The National Taskforce on
Obesity (2005) included among its recommendations that the Department of Education
and Science should prioritise the provision and maintenance of physical education and
physical activity facilities to address the issue of equity and access in all schools. This
echoes the reports by the ESRI (Fahey et al., 2005) which found that facilities,
especially those in primary schools need to be improved, particularly those necessary to
indoor activities.
There has not been a period of significant funding in physical education.
Investment is necessary at primary level before much of the curriculum can be fully
implemented. There is little evidence to suggest that children are experiencing quality
programmes of physical education as the research to demonstrate accurately the level or
quality of provision of physical education programmes at all levels of the primary
school is absent. Additionally there are no inspectors specifically for primary physical
education (compared to two, currently, at second level) and therefore there are no
accurate reflections or reports at Department of Education and Skills level as to the
teaching of the subject.
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