Today's youngsters do just a quarter of the physical exercise their parents did, a new survey shows. But when we called in at Lowfield School, in York, we found youngsters who can tell teachers a thing or two about getting kids to exercise.

NICKY Featherstone and Louise Collins may only be 15, but they still were able to pass on the benefit of their experience when they taught four- and five-year-olds at Poppleton Road Primary School - and their teacher - old-style playground games like tag and stuck in the mud.

"It was great fun, really tiring, but good fun," said Nicky. "Some of them were a bit of a handful and keeping their attention was hard at times, but by the end they were all asking us if we were coming back."

Eddie Bedingham, Garry Foster, Amy Johnson and Katie Dunnington, all 14, also joined in the exercise as part of a Junior Sports Leaders Award qualification they are all working towards.

Dave Kirkbride, reception class teacher at Poppleton Road, said he was impressed by the teenagers' enthusiasm and professionalism.

He said: "They were incredibly well-organised and the children had a fantastic afternoon. They taught them a variety of simple playground games that don't require a lot of equipment. I was amazed that they were only 14 and 15 and the hope is that they'll come back on a regular basis."

All this exertion was despite a survey carried out by market researchers TNS on behalf of supermarket chain Sainsbury's which showed today's children are involved in approximately three hours of physical exercise a week, including what they do at school - this equates to 156 hours a year.

Researchers questioned 500 families which each contained a child aged four to 16, a mother or father and a grandparent. The results found parents in the study said they recalled exercising for 12 hours on average a week or 624 hours a year.

Grandparents remembered doing even more exercise at 13 hours a week or 676 hours a year.

When we put these statistics to the Lowfield teenagers they agreed, saying that although they all do more than three hours a week, they are not necessarily typical.

Louise said: "I think it's because our parents were made to do exercise, they didn't get the choice and they didn't spend all their time on computers."

Eddie, who is taking PE at GCSE, said once children reach Year 9 at school they can opt not to take PE as part of the curriculum and although there are plenty of organised games activities put on at lunchtime and after school, youngsters can choose not to join in.

Researchers also found 57 per cent of youngsters say they dislike traditional games at school because they feel no good at them. As a result, almost 70 per cent admit trying to get out of sports lessons whenever possible.

Amy said: "A lot of kids in our year try and get out of PE because they can't be bothered or they don't have the confidence because it takes confidence to play sport in front of a lot of people."

The national survey showed some parents aren't helping either, with one in ten of mothers questioned admitting they have helped their children to skip games class in the past year by giving them a sick note about a bogus ailment.

School Sports Co-ordinator at Lowfield, Allyson Rae, said because of the success of the games at Poppleton Road Primary, negotiations are now under way with other primariy schools to repeat the event elsewhere.

Updated: 12:13 Wednesday, February 09, 2005