Parents have been urged to make sure their children get outdoors for plenty of active playtime and to let them take risks to help support their physical and cognitive development.

After a year heavily impacted by the global pandemic, many Australian children have had their physical activity limited in some way.

This week students arrived back to school for 2019, eager and nervous after their parents and caregivers had prepared them to put their best foot forward. However, a concerning new report has found that kids are failing to do just that. The report found that Australian kids are some of the least active in the world, ranking 32nd out of 49 countries.

Some Queensland children will wear specially made uniforms bigger than 9XL when school returns this week. The shock state of childhood obesity is exposed with the revelation that uniform shops are taking orders for young boys needing shorts with 150cm waists (59 inches).

The start of the school year is a challenging time for parents and children – the holidays are over and work/school routines are about to kick back in. With ‘back to school’ ads bombarding us at every turn it can be hard to know what’s really relevant when it comes to getting our kids school ready.

Getting kids away from screens and being physically active is not only good for their mental and physical health, it also boosts their academic prowess. So says two separate research papers - the Copenhagen Consensus Statement¹, which gathered research from a variety of academic disciplines to determine the effects of physical activity in children and youth, and the Active Brains study² released in November by the University of Granada.

Did you know that the average child spends 1500 hours in their school shoes? That's what the Australian Physiotherapy Association says, and it means parents need to think carefully about the shoes they choose for their kids as they do their back-to-school shopping.

With the official start of the school year at the end of the month, parents will no doubt be thinking about book lists, uniform requirements and the dreaded lunch box dilemma––healthy items their kids will actually eat! But two often overlooked areas of the back to school discussion are arguably two of the most important—what type and how they use their backpack, and what they wear on their feet.

As children return to school, the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) is urging parents not to be wary of children carrying a backpack of moderate weight, as research has shown that weight-bearing activity can help to prevent back pain in adolescence.