The Youth and Sports Committee held its nineteenth sitting on 26 April 2010. The sitting was chaired by Committee Chairman Milan Vuckovic, and attended by the Head of the Sport Department at the Ministry of Youth and Sport Dragan Atanasov, Secretary General of the Serbian Sports Journalists’ Association Slobodan Igrutinovic, Prof. Prvoslav S. Plavsic and Snezana Pantovic-Garacevic from the Serbian Sports Journalists’ Association, as well as the Director of the Republic Institute for Sport (RZS) Jasminko Pozderac and Aco Gajevic from the RZS.

Professor Plavsic presented the research on Media, Sport, Violence to the Committee members, conducted by the Serbian Sports Journalists’ Association with the support of the Ministry of Youth and Sport. The pilot-study aimed to secure arguments for roundtables, forums and educational seminars on the relations between the media, sports and violence which is a growing social problem. The project deals with sports violence and its treatment in the media, aiming to reduce and prevent it, and either avoid or eliminate the consequences. In the discussion, Snezana Pantovic-Garacevic also stated the fact that every 136 days a murder is committed at a sporting event in Serbia and that Serbia was first in Europe in the number of deaths at sporting events.

The Committee members agreed that the data was alarming and that research of this kind presents a crucial starting point in seeking a solution to the problem of sports violence.

In the continuation, Aco Gajevic presented the results of the pilot-study “Monitoring the state of physical ability of elementary school children in the Republic of Serbia”, conducted by the Ministry of Youth and Sport and Republic Institute for Sport in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. One of its goals is to institute a monitoring system to follow motor and morphological characteristics of children. The parameters characterising physical development and physical ability in elementary school children have not been monitored for more than 15 years and the project, intended to last until 2011 and cover the whole elementary school population on the territory of the Republic of Serbia, will create the potential for systematic monitoring of the physical development of children i.e. create a unified database. The results of the research shall provide the relevant institutions with a “starting point” in passing strategic measures of a planning-developmental character in the sphere of physical education. “Eurofit” provides a set of evaluation tests to assess the general physical ability of children between 7 and 18 years of age and are prescribed by the recommendations of the international programme (Council of Europe Committee for the Development of Sport).

Compared with the results from 1995, the body mass of elementary school children has risen by about 13%, and their body mass index (BMI) is higher by about 6%. Motor space results exhibit an inversive character – an about 9% decrease. Compared with children their age from European countries, Serbian elementary school children display above average results in the sphere of physical development (height and body mass), but in most motor tests the Serbian pupils’ score below the average, except in hand tapping and hand grip tests.

Following a discussion, the Committee members fully endorsed the continuation of the comprehensive project that would reveal not only the school children’s weaknesses but latent abilities as well. After the establishment of a comprehensive system that would provide a clear overview of the condition of the school age population in Serbia, measures can be proposed to improve the physical abilities of elementary school children which will be of great help to both parents and physical education teachers.