The Effects of Daily School-based Physical Activity Sessionson Academic, Physical and Life Satisfaction Outcomes inEight-to-nine-year-old Children: Experimental Findings of aNational Study in Three Maltese State Schools

This paper presents the main findings of a study on the effects of a pilot projectto deliver daily structured physical activity sessions in Maltese state primary schools. Theproject was implemented in three state schools involving Year 4 children aged eight tonine. A single 45-minute lesson of general physical activity was delivered to a class in eachschool from Monday to Friday by coaches from the Malta Football Association, spanning theentire 2022-23 scholastic year. A quasi-experimental research study explored any effectsof the project intervention across three main outcome domains, namely, academic, physicaland life satisfaction. The physical domain further included body mass index, a sprint test,and a battery of locomotor and object control gross motor skill tests. A total of 82 childrentook part and were distributed across the three treatment classes and three additionalcontrol classes. Pre- and post-testing took place in October 2022 and June 2023, in theweeks immediately prior to, and after completion of the intervention. A two-factor ANOVAwith interaction was used to test the experimental hypotheses, and eventually yielded nostatistically significant treatment effects across all 15 subdomains. While the interventionhad no adverse effects on academic performance, it similarly failed to produce measurablypositive effects in the physical and life satisfaction domains. The paper presents a detaileddiscussion of the results and their implications for policy, practice as well as future research.