The award, now in its fourth consecutive year, is undertaken by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Royal Health Awareness Society (RHAS).
His Majesty awarded first and second place winning students as well as winning schools. Around 305,000 students between the ages of 9 and 16 from 1,508 schools from throughout the Kingdom took part representing public and private schools, Military Education Directorate schools as well as UNRWA schools in refugee camps.
Several Royal Family members, diplomats, CEOs, partner organizations, and Sports Federation president attended the ceremony at the Prince Hamza Hall  at Al-Hussein Youth City.
Minister of Education Tayseer Nu'eimi who is the head of the King Abdullah II Award for Physical Fitness Award’s Higher Committee addressed the audience noting the award's tests were conducted smoothly and transparently and results were computerized on the e-fitness program on the Ministry of Education’s Electronic System on www.elearning.jo allowing students to easily access their results and other important information related to the award. He added that a study of the results will take place to examine the effect of the students’ participation on their well-being.
In his speech, Dr Rami Farraj, the chairman of the Royal Health Awareness Society’s Board, underlined how the award contributed to the improvement of the students’ fitness in the past few years and encouraged them to play sports on a regular basis.
The final tests for the winning students from the ministry level ended with 4,043 students getting more than 85% out of the full result. Of the winners 1,452 were males and 2591 females. Those were the ones who qualified to get to the ministry level for the gold, silver and bronze levels according to the results acquired previously.
In a meeting held for the Award’s Higher Committee, the Award’s Project Manager at RHAS Mr. Samer Kasih confirmed that this fourth edition the award was extra special both because the number of participants increased dramatically and because the results were extraordinary. He added that the analytical study of the results will start as soon as the awarding ceremony ends adding that program aims to be implemented throughout all the schools in the next academic year.
Mr. Kasih added that other ceremonies will take place in the Northern, Central and Southern parts of the Kingdom in addition to the refugee camps with the attendance of the winning students.
A previous analytical study illustrated that the award played a major role in improving participating students’ fitness by 69% by encouraging them to play sports on a daily basis. The study also pointed out that the percentage of students who managed to reduce their weight and reach the ideal weight range increased, achieving one of the award’s most important goals of working on alleviating diabetes.