Ministry blocks mandatory daily movement in schools, sparking lawsuit threat

The Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science has blocked a requirement for all primary schools to include daily movement in the curriculum. The move has prompted neuropsychologist Erik Scherder and children’s rights group Defense for Children to explore filing a lawsuit against the state, saying children’s health is not sufficiently protected, Pointer reports.

The National Expertise Center for the Curriculum (SLO) had included “daily movement” in the core objectives for primary education. The ministry struck out the provision at the last minute. There are 400,000 overweight children in the Netherlands, a number that has risen sharply in recent years.

Scherder, who has spent years studying movement poverty in children, said the ministry’s decision was the final straw. “There are now children aged 5 with type 2 diabetes,” he told Pointer. “Formerly, that was an old-age disease. Movement poverty is a pandemic.”

Since last year, Scherder has made repeated attempts to persuade the ministry to restore “movement throughout the day” to the primary school core objectives. He eventually secured a meeting with Joop Alberda, former national coach of the Dutch volleyball team, and Mirjam Sombroek, a professor of health law at Leiden University. The discussion proved fruitless. The ministry saw no reason to reinstate the specific core objective.

Scherder then turned to a lawsuit as a last resort. Defense for Children has joined the effort. “We are now together on a mission,” said director Carrie van der Kroon. “They have the right to play, to health, and to development. Those rights are at stake. Childhood is very short; we have no time to lose.”