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Mandating time allocations for active learning – key learnings from previous attempts
In the lead-up to the 2026 South Australian election, the state Labor Party made a notable education and health commitment introducing ‘a mandatory requirement of 150 minutes active learning per week for all public-school students from Reception to Year 9’.
This proposal sits at the intersection of public health, education policy, and political messaging—raising two key questions: what exactly is being promised, and has anything like it been done before in Australia?
A new policy and resources were promised that would be designed to support teachers to help students be more physically active throughout the school day. The policy statement indicated that the requirement could be achieved, not only through structured sport and physical education programs, but also performing arts and making regular lessons more active by, such as active learning breaks and movement challenges to reduce sitting time in the classroom, integrating physical activity in class and across subjects and school
camps/excursions involving physical activity.
It was deemed to be a significant announcement because, historically, South Australia has
not mandated a fixed minimum time for physical activity in schools … only recommended
guidelines and curriculum frameworks.
In fact, the last time a South Australian government provided a time allocation statement was in 1995 when their Department of Education created a recommendation to schools to
engage students in the compulsory years of schooling in a total of 100 minutes per
week within their Health and Physical Education programs.
At the time ACHPER’s recommendation was a minimum of 150 minutes for the HPE learning
area. Interestingly, when the policy was evaluated 5 years later:
> 85% of schools were aware of their Department’s recommendation,
> However, 55% of primary schools and 67% of secondary schools indicated they were not achieving the 100 minutes, and significantly, across the system, 40% of children in the early years were receiving less than 100 minutes of HPE per week.
Currently, the Australia Government’s national movement guidelines recommend that
children aged 5–17 engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity
per day.
This highlights an important point: schools are seen as a key, but not sole, provider of
children’s movement and physical activity experiences.
South Australia’s 150-minute physical activity pledge is innovative locally but not unique
nationally. New South Wales has already implemented a similar mandate.
Currently in New South Wales, ‘students in Years K-10 are expected to participate in a
minimum of 150 minutes of planned moderate with some vigorous physical activity across
the school week. This time includes planned weekly sport’. Previous studies, for example, by O’Brien et al found that only 59% of surveyed schools were meeting the 150-minute target in practice. Other states also experiencing challenges with enculturating such a policy.
Universally the challenges are multi-faceted … consistently reports have indicated issues
related to students’ gendered participation, geographical limitations, school administration
support, timetabling, class size, the crowded curriculum, program diversity, teacher
expertise, school coordination, parent and community support, facilities and equipment, and the one in which ACHPER across Australia plays a significant role … access to quality
professional learning in HPE, PDHPE and associated programs.
What distinguishes the South Australian approach is its broader definition of activity,
integrating movement across the curriculum rather than confining it to sport and PE.
However, whether it succeeds will depend less on the promise itself and more on how
effectively it is implemented in classrooms … a challenge that has proven difficult elsewhere in Australia and will require a whole of system, long term commitment of support from the highest levels of government to every classroom to establish enculturated quality programs and experiences for all children.
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