Physical Education Teacher License Test Content: 7 Domains, 21 Standards and Weights
Content of the Health and Physical Education teacher license test: the seven domains and weights (health sciences 30%), all 21 standards and ETEC's question style.
- Questions and time
- 88 questions · 120 minutes
- Pass mark
- 50%
- Exam fee
- SAR 100 for the subject test
Start with 10 free questions to find what needs more work. No sign-up, with answer explanations.
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Teacher License – Physical Education
Start with 10 free questions to find what needs more work. No sign-up, with answer explanations.
Try 10 free questions and see your levelLast verified: 31 October 2026. Our sources are the Candidate Guide for the Professional License Test for Health and Physical Education teachers and the Health and Physical Education teacher standards, both published by the Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) (1441 AH / 2020 edition; the guide is a trial edition and the latest available). This guide is independent: it is not affiliated with ETEC, Qiyas (the National Center for Assessment), the Ministry of Education or any government body.
In short: the Health and Physical Education test measures 21 standards in seven domains. The largest is health sciences at 30%, then curriculum and teaching methods at 24% and motor behaviour and psychology at 22%. Those three make up 76% of the questions. Programme management, adapted physical education and health and PE in the community are 4% each. It is one test, with no two levels.
One test for Health and Physical Education
ETEC publishes a single guide and a single set of standards for Health and Physical Education teachers, so there are no levels to choose between. The test combines health and body science (anatomy, exercise physiology, fitness, nutrition, injuries) with the teaching side (motor learning, sport psychology, teaching methods and assessment) and knowledge of games, their rules and how to teach them. Research into effective teaching sits inside the curriculum and teaching methods domain (standard 6.21.18).
Test format
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Questions | 88 |
| Question type | Multiple choice with four options; each question measures one indicator of one standard |
| Duration | 120 minutes (two hours) |
| Delivery | Paper or computer depending on the subject; shown in your personal profile |
| Language | Arabic |
| Calculator | Not allowed |
| Scoring | Criterion-referenced; wrong answers carry no penalty |
| Level scores | 50 for Practitioner Teacher, 70 for Advanced Teacher, 80 and above for Expert Teacher (Professional License Regulations, Article 4) |
The seven domains and their weights
These weights come from the table on pages 6 and 7 of the candidate guide.
| Domain | Official weight | Standards | Questions out of 88 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Sciences | 30% | 7 | 26 |
| Motor Behaviour and Psychology | 22% | 5 | 19 |
| Managing and Organising Health and PE Programmes | 4% | 1 | 4 |
| Adapted Physical Education | 4% | 1 | 4 |
| Theoretical and Applied Foundations of Games | 12% | 2 | 11 |
| Health and PE and the Community | 4% | 1 | 3 |
| Curriculum and Teaching Methods in Health and PE | 24% | 4 | 21 |
| Total | 100% | 21 | 88 |
Each question measures one indicator, and the test does not have to cover every indicator.
All 21 standards, one by one
Standard names follow the standards document (numbered 6.21.1 to 6.21.21). The "What it covers" column is our summary of their indicators, and the weight beside each standard is its weight in the test.
Health Sciences (30%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.1 | Basic concepts of anatomy and their use in health and PE programmes | 4% | Anatomy of the skeletal, muscular and nervous systems and the joints, and body composition (fat, muscle, water, bone density) from a health viewpoint |
| 6.21.2 | Basic concepts of exercise physiology and their use in health and PE programmes | 4% | Body-system responses and adaptation to exercise in normal conditions, heat, cold and altitude; the energy systems (ATP-PC, glycolytic, aerobic); work-capacity tests and body measurements |
| 6.21.5 | Basic concepts of physical fitness and their use in health and PE programmes | 6% | Correcting misconceptions about fitness, obesity and inactivity; performance-related fitness components (speed, agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time); measuring fitness; activity prescription (FITT) for different age groups |
| 6.21.6 | Basic concepts of nutrition and their use in health and PE programmes | 4% | Food components and groups; the role and timing of carbohydrates, fats and proteins around exercise; vitamins, minerals and water; changing students' eating behaviour; diet-related disease; supplements and additives; the dangers of doping |
| 6.21.7 | Common sports injuries and first aid | 4% | Recognising playground injuries, how they happen and how to prevent them; first-aid procedure (RICE); rehabilitation; CPR; using bandages and splints |
| 6.21.19 | Healthy lifestyle concepts and issues for quality of life | 4% | National and international activity recommendations (for example the WHO's average of 60 minutes a day for ages 5 to 17), sedentary behaviour, healthy eating, enough sleep, and the harm of energy drinks, smoking, drugs and stimulants |
| 6.21.20 | Safety and security when delivering health and PE activities | 4% | Safety rules at home, at school and in public places; the first-aid kit; handling unsafe weather; safe use of equipment and facilities during competition; ethics of protecting participants' health |
Motor Behaviour and Psychology (22%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.3 | Kinesiology and biomechanics | 4% | What biomechanics is and how it is applied; mechanical properties of the movement system (levers); classifying movements; Newton's laws, centre of gravity, stability, momentum and projectiles |
| 6.21.4 | Motor learning | 4% | Classifying motor skills (open and closed; discrete, continuous and serial) and what affects learning them; information processing and decisions; the stages of motor learning (cognitive, associative, autonomous) and transfer; assessing skills and correcting errors with feedback |
| 6.21.8 | Movement concepts and fundamental motor skills | 4% | Fundamental motor skills (locomotor, non-locomotor, manipulative) and their role in learning sport skills; movement concepts (body, space, direction, time, relationship and effort awareness) and how to teach them |
| 6.21.10 | Physical growth and motor development across life stages | 4% | Concepts and theories of physical growth and motor development; growth, perceptual and cognitive characteristics at each school stage; influencing factors; the teacher's role at each stage |
| 6.21.11 | Sport psychology | 6% | Principles and theories of sport psychology; motivating students to take part; psychological factors that affect performance; arousal and anxiety (the inverted-U hypothesis); handling behaviour problems during activity |
Managing and Organising Health and PE Programmes (4%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.9 | Managing and organising health and PE programmes | 4% | Elements of management (planning, organising, directing, controlling); modern trends; leadership and decisions; organising competitions (round-robin and knockout) including counting matches; working with colleagues and school management; identifying gifted students; following regulations |
Adapted Physical Education (4%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.12 | Adapted (special) physical education | 4% | The meaning and aims of adapted physical education; programmes for students with intellectual, motor, hearing and visual disabilities; inclusion with peers; measurement and assessment; programmes for learning difficulties and behaviour disorders |
Theoretical and Applied Foundations of Games (12%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.13 | Theory and practice of sports games | 8% | Technical skills and teaching steps in individual, team and racket games; basic positions, drills and error correction; rules of the games (football, basketball, volleyball, handball, athletics, gymnastics, table tennis, badminton and others) and their history; standards for designing lessons by gender and age group |
| 6.21.21 | Strategies and tactics in sports games | 4% | Training principles (overload, progression, specificity, reversibility, individual differences) and methods (interval, continuous, circuit); game tactics and formations; strategies for improving student performance; small-sided games |
Health and PE and the Community (4%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.14 | Health and PE in community service | 4% | Spreading health and sport culture; community health and recreation programmes; reinforcing religious and social values in the lesson; personal hygiene and modest sportswear in line with Sharia and custom; sporting ethics; Saudi sporting achievements and Vision 2030 |
Curriculum and Teaching Methods in Health and PE (24%)
| Standard | Name | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.21.15 | Teaching methods and learning styles in health and PE | 6% | Features of teaching theory in physical education; cooperative, discovery, problem-solving and project methods; whole, part and combined methods; linking the lesson to other subjects; direct and indirect teaching styles (Mosston's spectrum) |
| 6.21.16 | Health and PE curricula and their development | 6% | Policies and aims of physical education in general education; the curriculum's move from behavioural objectives to standards-based teaching; writing objectives in the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains; developing students' interests |
| 6.21.17 | Choosing varied strategies to help students meet learning goals | 6% | Choosing methods by students' abilities, interests and numbers; in-class and extracurricular activities; assessment methods (formative and others) matched to objectives; using technology to raise participation in activity |
| 6.21.18 | Research on effective teaching, misconceptions and learning obstacles | 6% | Research on effective teaching (academic learning time, ALT-PE); misconceptions and barriers to learning and how to correct them; small action-research projects with students; developing national projects in physical education |
The question style in ETEC's guide
The guide gives ten sample questions with the reasoning behind each answer, then practice questions with an answer key. They show the pattern of the test:
- Applied situations: a secondary student wants to build cardiorespiratory endurance, so which way of organising the activity suits him? The answer is aerobic activity at moderate intensity for at least 20 to 30 continuous minutes. In the same way, a person who wants to lose weight is advised to set realistic short-term goals.
- Short concepts: at which stage of motor learning can students spot their own errors but still cannot reduce them? The answer is the associative stage.
- Physics, nutrition and growth: why hitting a ball gets harder as the implement gets longer (biomechanics), the supplements recommended to a vegetarian teenager (vitamin B12 and vitamin D), and the growth stage with the highest calorie need (adolescence).
- Psychology and games: an open-day activity that lets students of different fitness and skill levels each succeed, and a change to football (a wider goal) that raises every student's chance of scoring.
- Teaching and assessment: the main benefit of task cards, and the best strategy for assessing mastery of a motor skill (observing students perform it in practice or in play).
The questions test applying knowledge in a teaching situation, so memorising definitions is not enough. ETEC itself notes that the guide's examples do not cover every aspect of the test and do not show how hard the real questions are.
How to use this table when you study
- Start with the free questions to see which domains are weakest for you.
- Order your time by weight: health sciences first (30%), then curriculum and teaching methods (24%), then motor behaviour and psychology (22%). The eight-week plan is built on these weights.
- Do not neglect the small domains. Games (12%) and the three 4% domains together make up 24% of the questions.
- Pull the rules of the games and the steps for teaching them into one place: standard 6.21.13 carries 8%, the heaviest single standard in the test.
Your score on our questions is an estimate of your readiness, not an official result. Each unit in unit practice is one of these seven domains, so if the free questions show weakness in nutrition or motor learning, for example, practise that domain on its own.
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Start with 10 free questions to find your weakest units. Keep practising with the full question bank and mock exams from SAR 26.
Sources and references
- ETEC – Professional License Test for Educational Professions (dates, scoring, FAQ and e-services) etec.gov.sa
- ETEC – Candidate guide for Health and Physical Education teachers (2020 trial edition): domains, weights and sample questions media.etec.gov.sa
- ETEC – Subject standards for Health and Physical Education teachers (1441 AH / 2020) media.etec.gov.sa