A study to develop motor fitness reference values of secondary school children in Sri Lanka

There is a dearth of reference values of physical fitness including motor fitness for secondary school children in Sri Lanka. The objectives of this study are to contribute to the available knowledge concerning the assessment agility (4x10m shuttle run), identifying sex and age-related norms of agility of the secondary school children in Sri Lanka. A quantitative approach was used in this study. Physical fitness assessments were implemented to measure 4x10m shuttle run of 1229 students (638 boys and 591 girls) which was a randomly selected sample in the Kandy District. All the data were computed and analyzed to formulate test norms as percentile values, stratified by chronological age groups separately for boys and girls. All the calculations were performed using SPSS vs. 17 for windows. revealed that P5 of the 4x10m shuttle run time of age 17 boys were very low comparing to other younger age groups. But at the end of the higher performance levels such as P75, P90 and P95, age 17 boys are performed better than their younger counterparts. This is an unusual pattern. The performance of girls of 4x10m shuttle run which is indicate that there are clear differences between age groups. Age 11 girls perform at a low level of agility as the normal and it is increased up to age 17 category gradually. The lowest P5 of boy’s 4x10m shuttle run test performance is 14 seconds and the highest P5 is 13.25 seconds. Meanwhile, lowest P95 of boy’s 4x10m shuttle run test performance is 11.7 sec. and the highest P95 is 9.7 sec. According to the graphs the lowest P5 of girls’ 4x10m shuttle run test performance is 15.7 sec. and the highest P5 is 14.7sec. Furthermore, lowest P95 of girls’ 4x10m shuttle run test performance is 12.3 sec. and the highest P95 is 11.3 sec. These norms are identical for some specific population. The agility levels of Sri Lankan children (both boys and girls) are not in the range of poor range. They are slightly different with the USA and European norms. However, we cannot say agility level of Sri Lankan boys and girls are not in a satisfactory level compared to such as USA standards, because these figures are normative base values.