The relationship between the practice of physical activity and sport and the level of motor competence in primary school children

Gross motor skills are the precursors of complex activities used for performing typical daily activities and for playing games and sports. The development of this kind of skills happens between three and eight years and an adequate level of these skills is mandatory in order to develop psyco-motor, social and affective domains of learning. In this work, the gross motor development has been studied in 120 children aged 6 to 11 from three different schools in Sicily. Every child performed all the items of the TGMD test and was ranked according to their gross motor development quotient. Later, thanks to the parents’ help, every child had to complete the CLASS questionnaire which had investigated on their daily routine in terms of activities done. Regression analysis was performed to establish which determinants impact the most on the skills development. Results showed that males, the children of the lower classes and those who practice a sport are more likely to have a high motor level in comparison with the respective reference categories (i.e, females, highest school classes, and students with low level of motion, respectively). These evidences are useful to understand the role of the school in the development of FMS and to plan adequate strategies in order to overcome the up-to-date limits in the physical education teaching-learning process.