School schedules: active breaks to rethink school days and combat sedentary lifestyles
The report by the Citizens' Convention on Children's Time, published at the end of 2025, points out that current school schedules are not well aligned with children's needs. Wouldn't offering children regular active breaks be a promising way to reinvent the school day?
Sylvain Wagnon, University of Montpellier; Rémi Richard, University of Montpellier and Sihame Chkair, University of Montpellier
Published on November 22, 2025, the report by the Citizens' Convention on Children's Time highlighted that the organization of the French school day remains poorly suited to students' biological and cognitive rhythms.
He calls for a major reform of school schedules, inviting us to rethink not only timetables, but also the way in which attention, rest, movement, and learning are distributed. With this in mind, wouldn't offering students active breaks (i.e., short periods of physical exercise, warm-ups, or relaxation throughout the day) be a particularly promising lever?
Increasing children's physical activity: a public health emergency
In 2024 in France, only 33% of girls and 51% of boys aged 6 to 17 meet the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations: at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. At the same time, between school and transportation, meals, and screen time, they remain sedentary for long hours.
This reality poses particular challenges for schools: how can they maintain the attention of students who are forced to remain still for long hours? How can they prevent attention disorders, fatigue, or anxiety? These questions are all the more urgent given that the French school system is one of those with the highest number of classroom hours for children throughout their schooling.
Before continuing, it is important to note that a sedentary lifestyle should not be confused with a lack of physical activity.
Sedentary behavior refers to the amount of time spent sitting or lying down while awake, with very low energy expenditure. It is therefore possible to be physically active according to WHO recommendations (e.g., running three times a week) while still being very sedentary if you sit for more than eight hours a day. Conversely, physical inactivity means not reaching the recommended levels of physical activity (at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity per week).
These two dimensions interact but are not to be confused, as pointed out in the Guide to Knowledge on Physical Activity and Sedentary Lifestyle published by the French National Authority for Health in 2022.
Relatively recent in public health, this distinction only became established in the 2000s, when large-scale studies showed that the risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers) existed independently of a lack of physical activity.
Active breaks: moving around together for a few minutes
An active break refers to a short period of 5 to 15 minutes of physical activity, integrated directly into learning or working time. It takes place in four phases: warm-up, cardio or motor exercise, coordination or balance activity, and cool-down through stretching or breathing.
It does not require a dedicated room or special equipment. Its effectiveness depends on regularity: several times a day, between two work or learning sessions. Although the forms may vary depending on the context and age group, it should not be confused with recess, motor skills, or physical education time. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fLAlm8qT4Lw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Example of an active break (Faculty of Sports Sciences, Marseille).
Since then, numerous studies have confirmed that physical activity stimulates brain plasticity and memory. Studies in cognitive psychology show that just a few minutes of movement are enough to boost sustained attention and concentration. Public health authorities have established that breaking sedentary habits reduces stress and prevents musculoskeletal disorders.
At school: learning better by moving around
For the past decade, studies and experiments conducted in Quebec as part of the À mon école, on s’active (Let's get active at school) project have highlighted the importance of this type of activity. In France, the Ministry of National Education has opted for daily physical activities (APQ) to ensure that every primary school pupil gets at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day at school. This measure, launched by the government at the start of the 2022 school year, is only being implemented by 42% of primary schools, according to a Senate report from September 2024. https://www.youtube.com/embed/p6vSGOnYlvw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Thirty minutes of daily physical activity (Ministry of National Education, 2024)
This measure helps to limit physical inactivity, but does not necessarily reduce sedentary lifestyles. The French recommendations updated in 2016 clearly distinguish between these two aspects: the benefits of regular physical activity do not always offset the harmful effects of time spent sitting down. To be effective, education policies must therefore focus on both increasing the amount of activity and reducing prolonged periods of immobility. The April 2025 flash mission on physical and sporting activity and obesity prevention in schools reaffirmed the urgent need for a comprehensive education policy.
In this context, active breaks are presented as a complementary measure: they should improve concentration and memory, reduce agitation to facilitate behavior management and improve the school environment.
Active breaks cannot be activities isolated from the rest of the learning process; they are an integral part of a comprehensive education that takes into account not only the mind (intellect), but also the body (movement, coordination) and the heart (emotional management). This vision was theorized by the libertarian educator Paul Robin in themid-19thcentury and could be adopted by secular public schools.
A revolution in our relationship with time
As specified in the November 2025 report of the Citizens' Convention on Children's Time, students' days must be completely redesigned, striking a balance between intellectual demands, physical needs, and rest time.
Integrating active breaks into daily routines is not a gimmick, but a profound transformation of the way we work and learn. They reintroduce rhythm, breathing, and movement as conditions for all intellectual activity. This issue has already been well researched at universities and in the professional world, where active breaks are becoming more common.
With breaks for silence, daydreaming, or rest, they create a true ecology of time that is more respectful of human needs.
These active breaks at school are a first step. Going further would involve integrating movement into the very heart of learning, for example through active furniture or educational approaches that combine walking and learning.
The fight against sedentary lifestyles could then become an opportunity to rethink our educational methods more broadly, promoting an approach where attention, the body, and knowledge evolve throughout all school spaces. Promoting these practices means choosing a society that prevents rather than one that tries to repair, and that cultivates attention rather than exhausts it.
Sylvain Wagnon, Professor of Education Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Montpellier; Rémi Richard, Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Sport and Disability, University of Montpellier and Sihame Chkair, Doctor and Researcher in Health Economics and Education Sciences, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.