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Childhood obesity, corporate philanthropy and the creeping privatisation of health educationConcerns about a global childhood obesity crisis have led to a proliferation of primary school-based health education policies and practices. What is surprising, however, is the recent explosion of 'obesity prevention' programmes and resources that are devised, funded, and implemented by multinational corporations and marketed to schools as 'health education'. In this article I draw on two corporate anti-obesity/health education programmes that are promoted to primary schools in the United Kingdom and Canada. Drawing on Foucault's notion of governmentality, I examine how the 'problem' of childhood obesity has become an opportunity for corporations and other institutions to govern children. In particular, I interrogate how specific technologies of government -privatisation, corporate philanthropy and multi-sector partnerships -align with the neoliberal political rationality. I also argue that even though the explicit aim of corporate 'anti-obesity' programmes is to help 'educate' children to make healthy lifestyle choices, they actually work to position children as self-governing citizen-consumers and attempt to transfer the responsibility of children's bodies and health onto children themselves. I suggest further research is necessary to understand how children and teachers experience these various programmes and how corporate anti-obesity curricula play out in primary school contexts.

Whilst globally there has been a great deal of discussion and rhetoric regarding the state of physical education at the primary level, there is a paucity of evidence regarding teachers’ perceptions of quality physical education in practice. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to explore and interpret primary school teachers’ perceptions of physical education in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) and identify the influence(s) of education, sport and health policies on these perceptions. This study utilized a mixed methods design, including a questionnaire of 487 classroom teachers from 133 different primary and intermediate schools in five regions (North Auckland, Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and Southland) across NZ. The research team also interviewed 41 classroom teachers from across the five regions. Three themes were drawn from the teacher surveys and interviews: muddled thinking; teacher levels of confidence; and physical education or sport. The findings suggest that a number of policies and practices have strongly shaped what occurs ‘in the name’ of physical education in primary schools. These have created a ‘perfect storm’ for primary physical education in NZ and there is concern that the reality of what occurs in practice does not meet the expectations of the national curriculum. There is a need to re-shape the principles and ideals of current practice in primary physical education rather than accepting the historical sports, competition, fitness, fundamental sport skills and ‘Kiwisportification’ of physical education.