Q.Please read the CBSE circular ('Awareness Programme on Whole School Approach to Fitness and Khelo India National Fitness Assessment Programme', CBSE/DIR(SE&T)/KIFA/2020, dated 19.03.2021) reproduced above, and think about: I. Why do the government and CBSE need to plan for a 'whole school approach to fitness'? II. What will be the fitness test items for the Khelo India Fitness Assessment for school children?

SAI Khelo India Fitness Test

The SAI Khelo India Fitness Test is a school-level physical fitness assessment carried out under India's Khelo India movement, coordinated through the Sports Authority of India (SAI). Its purpose is not to pick out champion athletes but to give every student — whatever their sporting ability — a simple, standardised snapshot of their own physical fitness, in the same spirit as a routine medical check-up.

The idea behind any national school fitness-testing programme is straightforward: fitness cannot be judged from appearance, or from how a student performs in one favourite sport alone. A student may run well but lack flexibility; another may be very flexible but weak in the arms. A standardised test battery — a fixed set of simple tasks, performed the same way with the same equipment everywhere — makes it possible to measure different aspects of fitness fairly, and to compare a student's results against age-and-gender norms and against their own earlier scores.

Programmes of this kind generally look at a spread of fitness qualities together rather than just one — strength, endurance, flexibility, speed and agility are the qualities most commonly assessed, because together they give a rounded picture of how a body moves and copes with physical demand. These qualities are typically measured through simple, low-equipment tasks: timed runs, standing jumps, push-ups or curl-ups, reach tests, and shuttle runs are common examples. Several such individual tests — each with its own precise procedure and scoring — are covered separately elsewhere in this chapter's test-and-measurement content.