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Elmwood School receives National Award for Quality Physical Education

Ottawa, May 15, 2009 – Elmwood School has won a National Award from Physical and Health Education Canada in recognition of their Quality Physical Education program. PHE Canada has acknowledged that Elmwood’s teachers and students are excellent role models for all other Canadian schools, by awarding them with the National Secondary Recognition Award. This award recognizes that Elmwood provides compulsory Quality Physical Education courses that are exceptional and enhanced by leadership opportunities and intramural activities.

This school year, only 141 out of 15,000 Canadian schools received a National Secondary Recognition Award.

PHE Canada defines Quality Physical Education (QPE) as a well planned physical education program that offers a variety of learning opportunities and is taught by qualified and enthusiastic teachers on a regular basis throughout the school year. A QPE program includes curricular instruction for a minimum of 30 minutes at least three out of five days per week, as well as interscholastic school sport programs, school wide events, and intramural activities where all students have the opportunity to participate.

In addition, Elmwood students participate in a variety of non-traditional physical education activities, such as a mandatory Ropes Course, visits to outdoor education centres, and the Duke of Edinburgh Program—a progressively challenging, globally recognized personal development program which complements academics with outdoor activities such as winter camping, dogsledding and orienteering.

Elmwood School has received a National Award from PHE Canada virtually every year since the recognition program's inception in 1988.