Thiruvananthapuram, May 31 (IANS) Billed as a first in the country, Kerala government will provide health cards to children studying in government schools in the state that would grade them in four categories depending on their fitness. “This is certainly going to be a path breaking initiative and we intend to do this to ensure that the health and physical well-being of children is taken care off, right from class I onwards,” said Education Minister M.A. Baby here Saturday. The minister said that government will implement the initiative from current academic session itself.

The government will also ensure that every government school has a trained faculty in physical education.

“At present even state government schools do not have a trained physical education faculty. When this programme becomes functional, to start with, we could have one physical education teacher working for two schools,” said Sports Minister M. Vijayakumar after handing over a state government committee’s report to Baby that suggests including health and physical education in school curriculum.

According to the recommendations of the committee, students from class I to V should have one period in health and physical fitness every day.

From class V to VIII there should be three periods every week and for class IX to XII two periods every week.

Kerala has around 1.6 million children studying in state government schools.

“The aim of the programme is to see that once the children are classified according to their fitness, we will strive to improve their fitness to the nearest highest grade, through constant monitoring,” added Vijayakumar.