Imagine that 80% of children who finish primary school are illiterate from 2024 onwards. This result would have drastic consequences not only for these children but also for the entire process of educational and social integration. Now imagine that these same children complete primary school without mastering fundamental movement skills essential for their physical, motor, and cognitive development. What may occur?

The reader needs to understand what these skills are to answer this question. FMS are a type of ‘building blocks’ that serve as a foundation for acquiring more complex motor skills, namely sports skills. FMS are usually clustered into three categories: (i) locomotor skills (e.g., running and jumping); (ii) object control skills (e.g., throwing and kicking); (iii) stabilization skills (e.g., rolling and balancing on one foot). Children are expected to perform these skills by 9-10 years proficiently. Their performance reflects their level of motor competence.

Recent studies have shown that children with low FMS performance will not be able to develop more complex motor skills, i.e., they will perform poorly when playing football, volleyball, basketball, or any other sport that involves a combination of FMS. In addition to restricting their normal motor development process, low FMS performance negatively affects other aspects of their development, namely cognitive development, academic performance, peer interactions, physical activity levels, and sports participation. In short, low motor competence is also associated with two major “pandemics”: sedentary lifestyles and childhood obesity.

According to UNESCO and other recent research, around 80% of school-age children do not meet the World Health Organisation’s recommendations for daily physical activity. It is now known that sedentary children are more likely to become sedentary adults. Current literature shows that a sedentary lifestyle in adults is associated with several diseases, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke. If we want to contribute to a more active and healthy society, it is therefore essential that this commences in childhood and that children complete their primary school with adequate FMS proficiency levels. Otherwise, their physical, motor, emotional, and cognitive development may be compromised.

Despite the recognized importance of mastering FMS for healthy and sustainable development, research consistently shows that children and adolescents perform poorly in these skills. This, therefore, suggests that not only are children and adolescents less active, but also lose their ability for movement quality. There is an urgent need to change this scenario.

Guidance, encouragement, and opportunities are essential conditions for adequate FMS development. These three conditions can undoubtedly be influenced by the contextual factors in which the child lives. Let us consider two hypothetical scenarios: John and Peter. John was born in a city that offers many opportunities for physical activity, such as cycling to school and playing different sports. His school has large areas for running and playing with friends. John and his classmates are regularly assessed in their Physical Education classes, and the Physical Education teacher uses this information to develop appropriate opportunities for everyone, guiding pupils according to their needs. Moreover, John’s parents and friends encourage him to engage in physical activities. This set of contextual factors is ideal for developing his motor competence. On the other hand, we have Peter, born in a place with few opportunities for generalized physical activities. His school does not have many playgrounds, and his Physical Education teacher does not carry out assessments to plan classes that cater to everyone’s motor development. Moreover, Peter’s parents and friends do not encourage him to engage in physical and/or sports activities. These contextual barriers represent the worst-case scenario for developing motor competence in any child or youth.

These hypothetical examples of Peter and John present two antagonistic contextual situations to better affect their motor competence development. These differences in the real world are not always so obvious, but it is clear that the contexts are very distinct in different Portuguese cities and regions. It should also be noted that the world has experienced one of the worst crises in its recent history, one that has changed the daily lives of children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for school-age children having had little or no opportunity to develop their FMS. In this case, what was already considered a low level of motor competence might have worsened. There is, therefore, an urgent need to study the levels of competence of primary school children in the Autonomous Region of the Azores and Matosinhos (mainland) following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike other measures of human development that have expected normative values for gender and age (e.g. weight and height), FMS have no reference tables. Despite this limitation, available motor development models suggest that 7-to-8 years-old children have the physical, motor, and cognitive potential to master FMS. The study that supports this fact was published in the early 1980s. The results showed that over 60% had mastered at least eight of the nine FMS evaluated at 8 years (boys) and 9 years (girls). These results will be compared with children from Matosinhos and the Autonomous Region of the Azores (Figure 1), where only five FMS were assessed (dribbling, kicking, throwing, rolling a ball, and catching).

The results display a strong heterogeneity between the percentages of boys and girls from Matosinhos and the Azores who dominate the five FMS evaluated: 

• Firstly, there is a significant difference in the performance of American children (values published in 1980) and Portuguese children (data from 2022-23), and this may be related to differences in the opportunities for FMS development experienced by children in 1980 and 2022-23. Rapid urbanisation and its expansion have been associated with a phenomenon characterised by a reduction in public spaces suitable for children to engage in physical and recreational activities. Such a development can be seen as a contributing factor to the reduction of FMS development opportunities in contemporary urban environments. Furthermore, concerns about children’s safety in streets and public spaces may lead parents to restrict their outdoor activities and to supervise their play more closely. This can limit children’s opportunities to explore different skills independently and creatively. This transformation of the urban environment may therefore significantly reduce access to suitable places for outdoor physical activity, adversely affecting children’s motor development and contributing to the disparities observed in FMS performance between different temporal and cultural contexts. Hence, all that remains in most cases is the ‘school space’, where the child can experience opportunities to develop their skills. It is also worth noting that children today are more exposed to screen time. There are studies that show that the longer the screen time, the less participation in various physical/sports activities that contribute to FMS development. Finally, it should be remembered that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the children in the present study spent almost two years confined to their homes with little or no opportunity for proper exercise. In other words, during such an important period of their lives, these children had fewer opportunities to develop from a motor point of view.

• Secondly, one needs to highlight the fact that boys are more skilled than girls. There are studies that clearly show these differences and that they are entirely due to cultural factors – girls are less guided and encouraged to practice FMS with objects such as balls and sticks. There is now a consensus on the importance of mastering these skills, as they are positively associated with levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity during childhood and adolescence. It is therefore vital that physical education teachers and sports coaches develop suitable strategies for the motor development of girls. Only then can this scenario in the near future be reversed.

• Thirdly, despite the descriptive nature of the results, boys from Matosinhos are much more proficient at all ages than their counterparts from the Azores. It should be noted that it is only at the age of 10 that children from Matosinhos reach scores above 60% proficiency in the five FMS. The percentage of girls from Matosinhos who have mastered the five FMS is slightly higher than girls from the Azores from the age of 8. It is highly likely that, in addition to geographical differences, cultural factors may be at the basis of these differences, in addition to the different ways of implementing strategies related to ‘online’ motor practice during the confinement of children. It is clear from Figure 1 that, with the exception of the Matosinhos boys at ages 9 and 10, their peers are very far from achieving 60% proficiency in the five FMS. 

The percentage of boys and girls who have mastered each of the five FMS varies greatly (Figures 2 and 3). For example, while girls from the Azores had the lowest number of proficient cases in the FMS of kicking (12%), girls from Matosinhos had the highest number in the FMS of throwing, with only 15% at expert level. Catching was the skill in which both girls from the Azores and Matosinhos achieved a greater number of proficient cases.

For boys, rolling a ball was the FMS with the lowest frequency of proficiency. Only 28% of boys from the Azores were proficient in this skill, while the proficiency rate for boys from Matosinhos was almost 60%. Catching was the skill with the highest frequency of proficiency in Matosinhos and the Azores.

In sum, if on the one hand, these results show boys and girls from Matosinhos performing better than their Azorean peers, on the other hand, they call for differentiated investments in terms of public policies, especially regarding education, promoting suitable FMS development in all children, from the best to the worst performers. No child should be left behind. To reiterate what was stated at the beginning of this article, FMS development significantly impacts various facets of children’s development. A case in point is physical fitness, generally understood as a state that reflects an individual’s ability to perform various motor tasks and is related to present and future health. The next point illustrates how FMS competence levels influence children's physical fitness following the pandemic.

‘Move well to move more’ is a famous phrase in many articles and books promoting a physically active lifestyle. A group of researchers presented a conceptual and relational model comparing the quality of movement, perceptions of competence, physical fitness, and physical activity levels in school-aged children. According to these researchers, a child proficient in performing FMS tends to feel more competent and motivated to participate in various games and sports activities. This results in a tendency to improve his or her physical fitness land moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels.

Although this model is relatively well-known, there is little evidence of the way(s) in which children with different levels of competence in performing FMS express their physical fitness levels, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this problem, Matosinhos and Azorean children were divided into three different groups according to their level of proficiency: group 1 was made up of children who mastered between four and five FMS, group 2 of children who mastered between two and three FMS, and group 3 of children who mastered at most one FMS.

Figure 4 shows the results of the agility and speed tests. Remember that the longer the time taken to complete the tests, the lower the agility or speed, i.e. the lower their physical fitness. The results show that group 1 (the most proficient group ) is always more physically fit, regardless of the children's gender. On the other hand, the children in group 3 (the less proficient) have the worst results in these physical fitness tests.

Figure 5 shows the physical fitness scores for the handgrip and standing long jump tests according to the three FMS ability groups and gender. The higher the FMS score, the better the fitness level. As before, Azorean and Matosinhos boys and girls from group 1 are systematically more physically fit than their peers from children in group 3.

All these results clearly show that children who move well tend to move more, i.e. they participate in a greater number of physical and/or sporting activities that improve their performance in physical fitness components. 

The present study presents important results regarding the FMS proficiency of Portuguese children and its influence on an important health indicator - physical fitness - following the COVID-19 pandemic. Except for boys from Matosinhos, the other children displayed low levels of FMS proficiency (consistently below the 60% success rate threshold). Furthermore, children with the lowest FMS proficiency also have low physical fitness levels. These results require a great deal of attention from educationists.

It is important to note that the world has undergone a very serious pandemic, during which children have had very limited opportunities to develop their motor skills, which are extremely important for acquiring an active and healthy lifestyle. This ‘delay’ is truly evident in the results. It is therefore important to promote effective public policies that can create appropriate and sustained opportunities for FMS development, especially for boys and girls from the Azores and girls from Matosinhos. Let no child be left behind. It is worth remembering that if we want to have a more physically active population of children and adolescents with better health indicators, it is necessary to intervene in the early years of their school life. This window of opportunity cannot and should not be missed.

School plays an extraordinary role in children's holistic development, and FMS are an extremely important part of their physical, cognitive, emotional, and social well-being. Let us return to the main argument of this article: completing primary school education without mastering FMS is equivalent to completing this education cycle without knowing how to read or write. This lack of motor competence tends to impair the child’s overall development. To have a more physically active and healthy society in the future, it is vital to invest in FMS development at the right time seriously. Allowing this timing to slip away can compromise the whole of a child’s later development, not only in terms of motor skills but also in terms of physical, cognitive, affective, and social skills. The school has a highly regarded responsibility to implement educational projects that are rewarding and suitable in content, guidance, and opportunities for all children.