Assessing the impact of a physical education project based on games approach on actual motor competence primary school children

The Italian project “Sport di Classe” is supported and implemented at national level by several organizations for promoting physical education and physical activity in the primary schools. The aim of this research was to examine the effect of the project on the development of fundamental motor skills by taking into account the level of motion in extra-time activities of the sampled participants and their gender. The research involves 100 children (57 males and 43 females; mean age: 10 years old). A proxy-report version of the CLASS questionnaires was used to estimate how children spent their extra-school time. According to these data, children were grouped into two levels of motion (i.e., High and Low) and, for each group by gender, paired-samples t-test was performed for assessing the actual motor competence developmental level pre- and post-project. The males who have been included in the low level of motion group had a significant improvement in locomotion and in gross-motor development quotient scores (most-likely and very likely positive effect, respectively). A contrary effect it was estimated for the females: only the girls included in the high-level motion group showed significant and very likely positive effect of the treatment in their locomotion scores. These results highlight the effect of the analysed physical education project, although the relative positive results on the selected participants is not sufficient to overcame the problems about the worsening in children’s FMS that the literature always underlines.