Physical inactivity is the fourth major cause of mortality in the world, so the World Health Organisation advises for children and adolescents to accumulate moderate physical activity at least 60 minutes a day with the aim to preserve health and prevent the occurrence of various chronic diseases. Elevated overweight and obesity, besides in adulthood, occur increasingly more in childhood. The aim of the research is to determine the level of nutrition and physical activity of younger school children, as well as the differences between girls and boys. The results obtained on a sample of 265 participants of a younger school age show that girls and boys have a normal nutritional level in the first and third grade, while for girls and boys of the second and fourth grade an elevated level of the body mass index (BMI) was noticed. Results show that most girls and boys of a younger school age do sports in their free time, and that they spend approximately 2 to 3 hours a day outdoors. Boys usually train three times a week, girls train two times a week, while the average boys' training lasts 60, and the girls' training 75 minutes.

The aim of this research was conducted with the aim to examine the influence of body mass on seven measured variables that evaluate the anthropometric characteristics, the motor and functional abilities of boys from 11 to 13 years of age, to determine whether this effect differs in boys who are engaged in team sports played with a ball, martial arts or boys that are not engaged in any sport, and examine the impact of doing sport on the body mass index. The research was conducted on a sample of 147 boys and with a sample of measuring instruments consisted of 10 valid and reliable tests used in elementary and high schools in Croatia. Research used one-sided ANOVA and pairwise t-tests with Bonferroni correction. With Pearson's correlation the correlation of the body mass index with the results of functional abilities was established and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test determined the normality of samples for residual of dependent parameters, and the Three Way Mixed ANOVA was used. Theconnection of body weight with six measured variables that define the physical conditionof boys is great and extremely negative. A moderate degree of correlation was established (-0.45) between the body mass index (ITM) and the results of functional abilities evaluated by the six-minute run test (F6'), pull up endurance (-0.48), trunk lifts (-0.33) and standing long jump (-0.345). It was found that there is a significant difference in the ITM of nonathletes and boys who were engaged in sports (p <0.0000000001), but no significant difference was found between boys engaged in martial arts and boys engaged in team sports played with a ball. The highest values in variables of standing long jumpwere observed in boys who were engaged in some martial arts, and the lowest values in boys non-athletes (AS = 164.47; SD = 26.38; F = 0.871). Equally, the highest value in the variablepull up endurance had boysengaged inany kind of sport, but the influence of body weight was least evident in boys engaged in martial arts. With non-athletes the influence of body weight is significantly more negative than inboys who were engaged in sport (AS = 29.84; SD = 23.92; F = 1.350).A statistically significant difference in changes in anthropometric characteristics, motor and functional abilities between sports groups has not been established and it can be concluded that doing sportof any kind not only has a positive effect on motor and functional abilities but also mitigates the negative impact of body weight. The obtained results show that the Physical Education classes in elementary school alone cannot guarantee a long-term positive effect on the health and anthropological characteristics of boys.

The topic of this paper are the material working conditions in Physical Education as a very important part of the educational process which is successfully conducted with appropriate exercising equipment, props and premises in which exercising takes place. The aim of this paper was to study the state of material working conditions in all primary schools in Pula. The research was conducted among 99 primary education teachers using an anonymous questionnaire that consisted of 14 variables. It examined the opinions of the teachers, their agreements and disagreements through a five-degree Likert scale. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that the main problem in primary schools in Pula is a lack of exercising equipment and props needed to work in Physical Education. Furthermore, gyms are not sufficiently available for classroom teachers because subject teaching has precedence over them.

Aim. The research was conducted with the primary aim of determining the antropometric characteristics as well as motor and functional abilities of three groups of examinees over a two-year period of organized physical activity engagement. The secondary aims were to examine each group's nutritional status and their connection to the results achieved in the functional ability evaluation. Material and methods. In the total sample which consisted of 147 pupils, one group was engaged in martial arts (karate, wrestling, taekwondo and kick-boxing), the second group in team sports played with a ball (football, handball and basketball), while the third group was physically active only on Physical Education classes. Ten variables were used for the needs of the research, while to process the data, the Student's t-test for dependable samples, the discriminant analysis and the correlation analysis were used. Results. For all the three measurements, the results show the superiority of examinees - athletes compared to non-athletes. Engaging in team sports played with a ball at the age of 11 to 13 has a more positive influence on the analysed variables of the anthropological status than for peers who are non-athletes, but the same was not shown for athletes engaging in martial arts (p < 0.05). The highest values of nutritional status were measured in non-athletic pupils, while lower values of the body mass index condition the better results of the six-minute run test (p < 0.01). Conclusion. The obtained data lead to the conclusion that only regular Physical Education classes held two school hours a week cannot secure a long-term significant influence on the development of children and adolescents' kinanthropological characteristics, but it is necessary to encourage children to take part in extracurricular sport activities. Some of the reasons due to which the differences in improvements acquired by the two groups of athletes compared to the group of non-athletes were not significantly higher can be explained by inadequate work conditions and the children's lack of interest for a specific sport activity, as well as by the choice of the coaching staff.

With the purpose to measure general interest toward sport in male Croatian adolescents, the General knowledge of sport (GKS) scale was constructed. The scale consists of 30 questions with the multiple-choice answers; the questions are about the rules of sports, history, events, achievements and athletes, from the world and local sport. The research of metric properties of the scale was done on the sample of 1184 male high school pupils, aged 15 to 20 years, from Istria region of Croatia. The results show that 3 items should be excluded from scale. The remaining 27 questions form adequate measuring instrument, with the acceptable value of Cronbach's alpha coefficient of reliability (0,78). It is concluded that 27-item scale can be useful as a short version of GKS.