chennai rather than stick with the usual round of volleyball and a lap or two around the track several schools in the state have decided to outsource their physical education classes to gyms and professional sports companies a month ago maverick fitness studio in chennai started its fit kids programme with trainers in schools to teach children the benefits of exercise and nutrition and introduce them to a proper fitness regime that they carry to adulthood we did research on what happens during physical education pe periods in most schools we found that only the children who are inclined to sports play the rest sit and chat we can teach children interesting ways to keep fit which dont necessarily involve playing a sport says gita krishnaraj ceo at maverick trainers incorporate storytelling and other methods to get children moving ajit shetty the man behind the score fitness clubs in the city has been running the pe programme at a coimbatorebased school for the last year and plans to expand the course to more schools in the next academic year as fitness trainers we understand how the body works so we train children progressively in the lower classes we only focus on handeye coordination and flexibility we move on to sports and games only from class 4 because by then the body has reached a certain level of fitness says shetty saumil majumdar cofounder and ceo of bangalorebased edusports has a sports curriculum for more than 20 schools in the city we believe that sports is an integral part of education we have report cards for each child which give details on their fitness and strength we give out two lakh report cards a year says majumdar unfortunately in most schools there is no structure or lesson plan for pe schools need to understand it is a subject like every other one only if you know the fundamentals of the body can you move to the advanced levels of sports he says dr saveetha rajesh founder of chennaibased the pupilsaveetha eco school says she decided to outsource her schools physical education classes to edusports because they offered a structured curriculum i found that with a games teacher it was difficult to ensure ageappropriate sports activities outsourcing the games classes have made them more professional we get regular assessments about the children and their development in terms of fitness strength and stamina and that is something parents are looking for she says