Slovenians are a sports nation with many top athletes, which furthermore encourages children to enrol in high schools with sports program/departments. Gimnazija Šiška has been offering and organizing sports departments for young athletes for 31 years. Their goal is to make it easier for students to coordinate school and sport obligations. With the help of sports (physical education teachers) and pedagogical coordinators, organized hours of additional learning assistance, adaptation of oral and written tests, athletes can successfully complete school obligations and at the same time make intensive progress in the field of sports. Students in sports departments also have a larger range of hours for physical education, which means that in one school year they have from 61 to 78 more hours of physical education than students of the general departments. The purpose of our study was to determine whether there are statistically significant differences in physical and motor development between students of Gimnazija Šiška who are included in general departments and in sports departments and also between students who are included in heterogeneous sports departments (different sports) and in homogeneous departments (same sport). Then we also compared the differences in physical and motor development between students of Gimnazija Šiška and the Slovenian representative sample. In our study the sample included 73 male and female students. The measurements were performed by sports educators in April in the 2016/17 school year. Through statistical data process we found that students of sports departments are statistically different from those who attend general classes/departments. They achieved better results in most of the measurement tasks of the sports education card. The largest differences were observed in the percentage of subcutaneous fat, which was lower in sports departments and in the 600-m run test, polygon backwards test and flexed arm hang test in which disciplines sport departments were also more successful. From the results we can see what impact the planned and correctly directed physical education classes have on sports achievements and on the results of measurement tasks of male and female students. Sports students are better in motor skills, which have a high coefficient of heredity (speed) and motor skills, which are more dependent on the training process and do not have a high coefficient of heredity (strength). Here we can also see the important role of appropriate, content-oriented physical education and daily sports activity in clubs.
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