Students in the Sun West School Division are improving in their overall fitness according to the latest report from the recently implemented FitsStats program.

In the 2011-12 school year, 64 per cent of students ranked in the top two categories of physical fitness which classifies them as very fit, while the number of students in the lowest category of physical fitness dropped five percentage points from the school year previous to 20 per cent.

FitStats is a division-wide program that acts as an online tool for phys-ed teachers and individual students to track grades 6 to 12 student’s fitness levels through a common test in terms of health, which focuses on cardio-respiratory fitness and muscular strength, and in terms of skill related fitness, which takes into account power and agility.

Miles Bennett, Sun West School Division athletic commissioner/phys-ed mentor, said these results show students and phys-ed teachers are using the FitsStats program to improve on the division’s student fitness levels.

“No other jurisdiction in the province and no other school division in this province have this kind of data,” said Bennett. “Every phys-ed teacher out there is working almost independently. They are doing fitness tests and might be doing similar fitness testing, but you can’t really correlate the data because it’s not necessarily going to be all the same in how you do it.

“Based on the results that we’re seeing is the health of kids in Sun West is all pretty good and we can use that data to plan what we can do to improve the health of those kids in the lower (category). That is our objective.”

He said this program has provided “standardization” for all phys-ed teachers in the school division to test their students properly in order to understand where their students stand compared to other schools in the division.

Bennett first tried the program as a pilot at his school, Rosetown Central High, where he has served as a phys-ed teacher for 26 years. He then took the proposal for FitStats to the school division and three years later all the schools had signed on.

“We had a push-up test…in the 2010-11 year we had 2,800 entries and last year we had just about 28,000 entries,” he said. “It was a 1,000 per cent increase.”

To read more please see the Oct. 22 print edition of The Davidson Leader.