I’ve been reading some amazing research that is telling us that, as well as being good for our bodies, exercise is fantastic for our minds? Research has shown that exercise can boost our memories and improve our academic performance, making regular exercise incredibly important for school children who want to achieve their full potential.
One of the pieces of research that I find most interesting comes from a study of the physical fitness of year 5, 7, and 9 students, which shows a huge difference in academic performance between physically fit and unfit children.
A summary of those results, below, shows that whereas an unfit child can be expected (on average) to score roughly at the 28th percentile for maths, a child that is physically fit can expect to score at the 66thpercentile. That is a huge difference, and roughly equates to the difference between a D grade at GCSE and an A/B grade.
Of course, we have to remember that these are averages (everyone has experienced a very unfit brain box, and a super-fit person who is just not academic), but the message could not be clearer.
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