NEWS

The Italian Olympic Committee hosted the final event of the Sport Opens School

On November 23, 2021, the Italian Olympic Committee hosted in the prestigious Sala d’Onore of Foro Italico the final event of the European Collaborative partnership Sports Opens School (SOS). Due to COVID-19 restriction, the event was organized in a blended modality with around 70 participants face-to-face and more than 100 booked for the online modality.

During its lifetime, the eight partners of SOS (Centro Universitario Sportivo, CUS Padova – ITA,

Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano, CONI – ITA, Inspectoratul Școlar Județean Bacău – ROM, Instituto N.ª Sra. da Encarnação – Cooperativa de Ensino, ECB – POR, Istituto di Istruzione Superiore ‘Newton-Pertini’ – ITA, Budapest VI. Kerületi Kölcsey Ferenc Gimnázium, KFG – HUN, and the European Athlete as Student Network – MLT) cooperated to develop a new teaching method for high school physical education teachers.

Dr. Marco Arpino and Dr. Jacopo Tognon (CONI) opened the conference and Mr. Riccardo Garavello (CUS Padova) welcomed the participants of CUS Padova. Dr. Paola Deiana (Office V, Italian Ministry of Education) stressed the relevant role of physical education for the holistic development of young students and supported new approaches of school physical education to enhance active lifestyles and the sport culture.

Marianna Pavan (CUS Padova), Laura Capranica (EAS), Laura Brazzarola (CUS Padova), and André Luís (ECB) illustrated the project’s aims, development, and outcomes. In particular, the initial phase of SOS encompassed research updates on three main areas Physical Activity and Health; Fairplay and Integrity; Life and Employability Skills. Furthermore, school coordinators provided an overview of the specific situation of each partner school. This narrative research allowed to create the 15 SOS Physical Education teaching sheets and teaching units, translated in English, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Following the analysis of data collected during a monitoring phase, the SOS toolkit is now available to be used at high school levels as a part of the traditional PE curriculum (https://www.sportopensschool.eu).

Finally, Antoni Balàsz (KFG) offered the opinions of the students participating in the project and Marta Gravina (CUS Padova) presented the closing remarks.