French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra has pledged to ensure more schools are able to access additional hours of sport per week ©Getty Images

More schools in France are set to be able to access further hours of sport as a legacy pledge for staging the Olympics in Paris next year.

French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra and National Education and Youth Minister Pap Ndiaye have revealed that two additional hours of sport per week will be extended from 167 to 700 schools at the start of the next school year.

The announcement comes after France held its annual Olympic and Paralympic Week which has been staged every year since Paris was awarded the Games in 2017.

More than a million students from around 8,000 schools and institutions participated in activities which started on April 3.

The event aims to raise students' awareness of Olympic and Paralympic values while promoting different sports in the Games and make a positive change on young people's perceptions of disability.

More than a million students from around 8,000 schools and institutions participated in activities as part of the Olympic and Paralympic Week ©Paris 2024
More than a million students from around 8,000 schools and institutions participated in activities as part of the Olympic and Paralympic Week ©Paris 2024

In a column featured in French newspaper Le Monde, Oudéa-Castéra and Ndiaye insisted that schools will be the "strongest foundation on which we will build the sporting legacy of the Games".

"The development of physical activity and sports at school is a priority common objective," said Oudéa-Castéra and Ndiaye.

"This is where we will concentrate our efforts in the months to come, in particular to fight against physical inactivity, the health time bomb that threatens our children.

"At the age of 13, only one in 10 teenagers reaches the WHO [World Health Organization] recommendations of 60 minutes of daily physical activity and sports.

"More than 40 per cent of young people aged six to 17 in our country spend more than three hours a day in front of a screen.


"The consequences, we know them: two thirds of these young people present a worrying risk for their health.

"We are convinced that, from motor skills to the relationship with the body, from collective rules to surpassing oneself, the learning that sport can bring to individuals and to society as a whole is fundamental."

Paris 2024 is due to celebrate 500 days until the start of the Paralympic Games on April 16.

"This momentum reminds us that the Games, although they are of course the first sporting event on the planet, also serve the greater purpose of making France a 'sporting nation' and that it is first and foremost at school of the Republic that a nation is built," added Oudéa-Castéra and Ndiaye.

Paris is set to stage the Olympics from July 26 to August 11 in 2024, with the Paralympics scheduled to follow from August 28 to September 8.