Once upon a time in West Yorkshire, in the days when Britain had a mining industry and schools had regular sport on the curriculum, the issues for physical education teachers were simple and practical.

As a young PE teacher Margaret Talbot recalls: "When the wind blew smoke from the local coking plant in the wrong direction, you'd to bring the pupils in. Sometimes you couldn't see the kids you were teaching, and got horrible grit between your teeth. Once, through the billow- ing, murky clouds, I saw a bull on the pitch. I was able to usher the kids indoors, and the local farmer came to corall the animal."

Now Professor Talbot, she faces issues less dramatically in her face, but is trying to stop the charging bull of an education system which undervalues PE teachers and is cavalier with pupils' future.

She is chief executive of the Association for Physical Education (afPE), described by Westminster's shadow minister for sport as: "The only independent voice for physical education independent from government. It is vitally important that its voice is heard and recognised."

The body embraces teachers, researchers, lecturers, and advisers, and covers all of Britain. After generations of fragmented voices it claims to be PE's first truly united one. Irish and Welsh divisions are already in operation and a Scottish one launches this autumn.

The Linwood Project in some Renfrewshire primaries nearly 30 years ago demonstrated kids who had quality daily PE were better behaved, had better retention and attendance, while their academic achievement either stayed the same at worst, or improved.

That's now been reaffirmed so often that it seems a no-brainer for adoption as national policy. "I don't think education has been very good at articulating these benefits," agrees professor Talbot, who concedes the sector has not been sufficiently savvy about lobbying. "Academics within PE haven't seen the need to make messages simpler and clearer."

The association aims to lobby more effectively, and believes health, obesity, and child and public health arguments are incontrovertible. Recent political moves have been encouraging, but rhetoric is not always translated into practice, and she insists the system is failing a majority of primary teachers.

"They think it's ok to train primary teachers in less than a year. The post graduate route is now the shortest in Europe. It's a national disgrace across the UK that we think we can train our teachers in eight months."

In some cases that amounts to just six hours. She claims that's a soft option for government. A one-year turnaround makes it easy to manage the demand-and-supply relationship of changing demograhics.

"Many countries have a four-year qualification. It's not teachers' fault that some of them are among the worst prepared in Western Europe. Some training providers make sure enough time and energy is spent on PE. If some can do it, why can't the rest? Successive governments are letting down Britain's children. It's civil servants making life easy for themselves, and ministers going along with it because it's not in their interests to challenge."

What is perhaps most surprising is that government is ignoring UK parental opinion. An independent survey done for afPE demonstrated how concerned parents are. It showed fewer Scottish parents (81%) than any other part of the UK (average 85%) are aware primary PE provision is a statutory requirement. Nevertheless this demonstrates high parental awareness of concern for physical education.

Asked how important PE is for primary children, 81% of Scottish parents say it's "very important" (UK 83%). The remaining 19% of Scots think it's fairly important (In Wales 5% think it's not very important.) A staggering 10% have no view at all, or disagree with the current Scottish Government objective of all pupils receiving two hours' quality curriculum PE weekly, but just six hours' training for more than 40% of primary teachers causes acute concern among 42% of Scots parents, and fair concern in a further 49%.

Some primary heads employ teachers with no qualification in PE delivery - 83% of Scottish parents are unaware of this (UK 75%). Though parents clearly don't ask enough questions on the quality of those teaching their children, the 86% of Scots concerned about PE delivery by unqualified people is the highest in Britain.

Scotland is "up-skilling" 600 traditionally qualified primary teachers with additional PE training. But this will not put a trained specialist in every school in Scotland, or even guarantee they will teach only PE.

By next month, two hours' weekly quality PE was supposed to have been achieved across Scotland. Hardly a single school has made this modest target. England's target is two hours per week for all within the curriculum, and the offer of a further three hours for all by 2014.

Scotland's target is one hour's activity per day for 80% of pupils by 2022.

It seems far out of sight. And the health time-bomb ticks ever louder for our children.