The hole between the proportion of girls and boys in England who get pleasure from PE classes is widening, a survey suggests.

Some 59% of women in secondary faculties who responded to a Youth Sport Trust survey mentioned they preferred PE or preferred it so much, in contrast with 84% of the boys.

The women’ proportion in the identical survey in 2016 was 74%, whereas for boys it has remained secure.

The authorities mentioned it needed to make sure all kids had alternatives to create a lifelong ardour for sport.

A Department for Education official mentioned its plans for enhancing women’ entry to sport included encouraging faculties to supply a minimal of two hours of bodily schooling every week.

More than £600m of fundingis to be delivered over two tutorial years, which was introduced after England girls’s nationwide soccer staff wrote an open letter to the federal government, calling for extra school-sport alternatives for ladies.

Periods and low confidence had been the 2 most typical causes women within the survey gave for not eager to play sport.

The charity behind the survey, Youth Sport Trust, mentioned it ought to “raise alarm bells” about women’ future exercise ranges as adults and higher motion was wanted to interact younger girls in sport.

“There is so much more still to do,” chief government Ali Oliver mentioned.

“At a time of unprecedented low levels of social and emotional wellbeing, we know getting things right for girls in PE can be life-changing.”

A-level pupil Tizzy, 18, who requested for her surname to be withheld, by no means loved PE. Not naturally sporty, she usually felt unnoticed and people who excelled took over.

The curriculum sports activities akin to hockey and netball felt “old fashioned and outdated”, she says.

“Some people really like sport and some people don’t – and you’re forced together and kind of expected to get on with it,” Tizzy says.

“I really didn’t like it. It was all of it – getting on the bus, getting changed, getting really sweaty, the competitive people shouting at you for not doing the right thing.

“The academics would choose individuals who had been good at sport to do issues – and also you had been left probably not realizing what you had been doing.”

Olympic pole-vault bronze-medallist Holly Bradshaw said the survey was disappointing but unsurprising.

“I can actually empathise with their worries about being watched and judged by others,” she mentioned.

And if schools offered a wider range of PE kit options, it could help improve girls’ uptake and enjoyment of sport.

Nearly 25,000 children were interviewed for the annual survey, with responses from 18,500 girls and 6,000 boys aged between seven and 18 from schools in England.

The 2016-17 figures additionally included solutions from kids in Northern Ireland and Wales.