The Hungarian School Sport Federation organized its second international conference on physical education and sport at schools (the HIPE Conference) this year, as a follow-up of the first HIPE in 2014. This time, HSSF took a broader approach and looked at the subject from the perspective of health-enhancing physical activities. By bringing sports under EU competence, health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) has now become a mainstream topic in the profession, in policy and in science as well. Today the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the World Health Organisation and the HEPA national focal points are all exploring as many areas of life as possible to identify factors that help people to become more active physically. Now, in 2016, promoting regular physical activity should inarguably be a priority objective of Life-long Learning. In an ageing Europe, both quality of life and global economic competitiveness are affected by our physical and mental health. Due to our more and more sedentary lifestyle, it truly matters what and how much we eat, and how much and how intensive physical activities we do. Physical education and sport is the primary platform not only for increasing knowledge and developing skills and abilities, but also, to that end, for forming attitudes and learning responsibility or, in other words, the adoption and development of a future-oriented mindset.
The two-day conference aimed to cast more light upon the need for efficient and quick solutions. HSSF’s experts and the invited guests presented recent Hungarian developments, policy achievements and the essence of the European Framework of Quality Physical Education currently under development. The presentations also spoke about the importance of increasing physical literacy and, from that aspect, the concept of grassroots sport.
The conference has been both the closing event of one of the winning ERASMUS+ projects of the Hungarian School Sport Federation (SHA P.E.), and the kick-off event of a new project, as the Federation received a mandate from the Hungarian Government for the next four years to implement a substantial part of the national T.E.S.I. 2020 strategy, prepared also by the Hungarian School Sport Federation. According to plans, interested parties will be informed about the progress of this project at the next two HIPE Conferences to be held in 2018 and 2020. For more information on the conference, its programme and key speakers, visit: http://www.mdsz.hu/hipe2016/
