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What are we actually trying to achieve through school sport? Do we even know?

August 10, 2012 3:34 pm

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Jon Worth

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The political debate around the legacy of the Olympic Games over the last few days has revolved around whether every kid in every British school should have to do two hours of compulsory sport every week.Cameron thinks not, while Boris Johnson and Kelly Holmes think they should.

But as far as I am concerned this question really misses the point.

What are we actually trying to achieve through school sport? Do we even know?

Is it to keep kids fit, and reduce obesity? Is it to give kids a taste of sports that they may then subsequently excel at? Is it to give kids the first taste of elite competition, which may eventually lead to olympic medal victories?

As far as I am concerned it can only ever be the first of these, and a little bit of the second. It cannot ever be the latter. But I would like to see some evidence about all of this, because at the moment we’re high on hyperbole and low on analysis.

In my school I was ‘lucky’ – I had at least three hours of sport a week. Rugby, football, cricket and some running and swimming. Yet the only two of these I was ever any good at – swimming and long distance running – were thanks to lessons outside school and nothing whatsoever to do with what the school could do. The kids who were useless at swimming at 11 were still useless at 16. I was reasonably good at 11 and was still reasonably good at 16, and all of that was due to my parents taking me to lessons in the evenings as a small kid and swimming racing and lifesaving training in later years.

It turns out that the sport I can really do – inline skate marathons – was something I first tried at the age of 28 – who knows what might have happened if I had discovered this at the age of 14 instead? Or canoe slalom, or dressage? But the only way this could ever be possible would be through the provision of facilities and clubs for whole towns and cities. We cannot expect schools to achieve that sort of provision.

Likewise the “too many British medallists are from private schools” critique by Owen Jones and others riles me. Unequal sports achievement is a result of our unequal society where not enough parents can afford to take their kids to swimming lessons or taekwondo classes. In that context it’s no surprise that places like Millfield excel, and 2 hours of sport (or not) in all our schools is not going to make much difference when it comes to elite sports.

We need solid and concrete steps towards the achievement of a more equal society, and more equal sporting success will flow from that. Everything else is secondary.

This post was first published here.

John Dore

You have missed a serious point and that is competitive spirit and its ability to affect results. The private schools understand this and leverage it to great results. Well to do parents also imbue their children with this. The result is people who have a spirit to maximise their potential.

Its not about being the best, but more about achieving your best. State schools where sport is about nobody winning ultimately teaches us to be average, ie to level down. Its a false thing to think of it as winners and losers, we must be teaching our kids to excel according to your own ability.

I can only speak from personal experience, I was the last picked at all sports because I have very poor hand eye co-ordination and anything to do with a ball mean’t I got picked last. People see me as one of the most competitive people they know because my mother beat it into me and it has stood me in good stead. I never had the social class or education to get the job I have but I knew I could do it and I got here. Moreover I am shooting at a level much higher because I know I can do it.

A kid brought up on an estate has to be taught that they have potential, they dont know it as an accident of birth. The trouble that we have is that we went through a period where the politically correct dumbed down, meaning that the kids were programmed to not reach their peak, what a shame.
- http://twitter.com/jonworth Jon Worth
  
  Very fair comment, although do you need sports to be competitive? Because it strikes me that the UK academic system that’s so based on exams and testing is one of the most competitive I have encountered in Europe.
  
  As for the ball coordination point – I am with you on that (I faced the same), but I had other skills. Dealing with that would need not only a certain number of hours of sport, but also a diversity of the sports provision.
  - Robertcp
    
    Jon, to answer your question, the aim of schools sports should be to get kids fit and to give them a taste of as many sports as possible. Elite athletes will hopefully emerge from this but it should not be the aim of government policy. Lottery funding rather than taxes should be used to support elite athletes.
    
    The truth is that Team GB is mostly winning events that will usually be won by athletes from wealthy backgrounds in wealthy countries. Sports such as boxing and track and field are often won by athletes from poor backgrounds and/or poor countries.
  - John Dore
    
    I see where you are coming from, but the irony is that their are kids that cant do the dumbed down a*’s for all either.
    - Robin Thorpe
      
      The irony is that there are many children who may even only get a C in their English GCSE who know which version of there, their, they’re to use in the correct context.
jaime taurosangastre candelas

I believe there’s a 4th thing that you do not mention Jon – the importance through life and in many disciplines beyond sport of being a team member, learning to work together collectively, and building a sense of rapport with others.

My daughter’s school is just like any other – the pupils have their own little cliques and friends, but when I watch them play team games I’m really impressed by how the groups come together and play for the team they are on, and what is more most of them are smiling, laughing and really enjoying themselves.

This 4th thing is not in conflict with the other 3 you note above – it can co-exist. 99.99% of people will probably never become an elite and professional athlete, but 99.99% of people will work in a team as an adult, and 100% of people will benefit from exercise.

(There are also some technical physiological reasons why it is extremely good for children and young people to exercise regularly – growth spurt regulation, bone growth and strength around puberty, development of an even gait, hip and knee improvements, breathing capacity, agility, balance, and hand / foot / eye coordination – if I was making your case I’d put that in as a 5th reason)
- http://twitter.com/jonworth Jon Worth
  
  Very good points – precisely the reason for writing this blog entry and provoking a sensible and thoughtful debate. I think your comment, and that from John below, demonstrate this is a complicated and multi-faceted issue, and most definitely more complex than the political reactions so far.
- PeterBarnard
  
  Good positive comment, Jaime, with one quibble : ” … 99.99% of people will work in a team as an adult …”
  
  I can’t believe that what happens in both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, over many many years, has passed you by …
  - PeterBarnard
    
    I’ll rephrase that : ” … 99.99% of people will work in a team as an adult … and the other 0.01% are in the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, at all sorts of levels …”
derek

As another 20 school playing fields go up for sale, more and more children are being forced to chose the arm-chair and the and playstation option.I’ve meet some kids who can talk a great game of football but have never been involved with a football team, they’ve gained the knowledge through the fifa football computer games, such a shame! school sport and team membership is an achievement.School summer games should be compulsory, a time when children and parents can spend quality time encouraging their children and exchanging positive talk with others.
- http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone
  
  “another 20 school playing fields go up for sale”
  
  And that blows the Conservative’s pro-sport posturing clean out of the water.
  
  Also, let’s not forget, school sports fields are often hired out after school and at weekends by local teams/ athletic clubs and are used by individuals for various exercise purposes, so the loss of sports fields denies opportunity to the whole community.
- PeterBarnard
  
  Derek, re : ” … another 20 school playing fields go up for sale…”
  
  Philip Collins (a Labour sort of bloke, I believe) writes in today’s Times to say that in 1998 the government ensured that any future playing field sale would require the consent of the Secretary of State and that the proceeds from a sale should be returned to sporting facilities.”
  
  He goes on to say that “This is true in all of the 20 cases of playing field sales that have been approved by Michael Gove since 2010.”
  
  He also says that (i) between 1979 and 1997 more than 10,000 playing fields were sold off, and (ii) between 1998 and 2008, just 226 applications for sale were granted, and under the 1998 conditions.
  - derek
    
    Gove has approved 21 of 22 applications to sell off school playing fields since 2010 and those figures from 1979 to 1997 are shockingly high.School sport has been seriously diluted from the previous tory government to the present and labour didn’t fair much better, although as pointed out they did make a serious effort to halt the process.Many schools did suffer from PFI and external management of sport facilities, where the capitalist giant sold the use of facilities to the paying public which had a negative effect on school sport time and use.A school without sport? it’s like a blackboard without chalk. Thanks for the info @Peter,jeez! looks like only the private schooling sector will be able to afford any school sport.How many of our Athletes didn’t attend private schooling?
    - geedee0520
      
      ‘How many of our Athletes didn’t attend private schooling?’ about 90% from the figures I’ve seen. Assuming you mean runners & jumpers etc. as, obviously, anyone who does rowing etc isn’t an athlete.
      
      Anyway, thank the lord that John Major insisted that the lottery funded sport eh?
      - derek
        
        So how would you describe, rowers, cycling, horse jumping, shooting, archery, swimming and boxing not to mention judo, Karate, weight lifting? I’d say a certain level of fitness was required for all types of sport, especially at Olympic level.
Alan Giles

“In my school I was ‘lucky’ – I had at least three hours of sport a week.
Rugby, football, cricket and some running and swimming. Yet the only
two of these I was ever any good at – swimming and long distance running
– were thanks to lessons outside school and nothing whatsoever to do
with what the school could do. The kids who were useless at swimming at
11 were still useless at 16.”

Jon, you are a trouper!. To be able to say you were lucky to have rugby every week(I put too much value on my teeth – loss of teeth plays havoc with your embochure if you play a brass instrument).

But on the other part of the quote: my personal view – a non-political one – is that natural talent has more to do with success in sport, as well as music and other skills, then the educational estblishment you went to our what money your family had. To take sport first, it seems to me the majority of top class footballers came from fairly humble backgrounds – going back to Bobby Moore and most members of the 1966 World Cup squad, coming up to more recent time – David Beckham was born in to a modest family in Leytonstone in East London. There are not that many Etonian players or scions of wealthy families. The same is true of some of our best boxers. Our very best snooker players come from very modest backgrounds.

In my own case in music, though I only knew part of one side of my family, nothing of the other, there was no musical skill or ambition, even music on the radio used to get on my grandparents nerves, but I took to it like a duck to water, and thanks to paper-rounds I was able to buy a trumpet quite early on.

Luckilly the trumpet is (or was) one of the cheapest musical instruments – at the time every junk shop seemed to have one for between £5-£10. Now a more well-off lad might have been able to have had a better instrument, and constant lessons, but if the natural gift wasn’t there, he would have had no advantage over me. I genuinely think talent is a bigger incentive than the type of school you went to (secondary modern in my case). true, I wasn’t THAT talented, and when I realised I was never going to be as good as Dizzy Gillespie (who was?) the enthusiasm waned, just a little. But then that’s life. I suppose a lot of gifted athletes and sportsmen/women, discover one day there are other areas of life which are going to become more important than the youthful passion

I think provided the young person can be provided with the tools to do the job so to speak, whether it is access to a swimming pool, or a tennis club at nominal rates, or access to an instrument, or painting materials – whatever interesets them, talent will out.

Boris Johnson has said he wants all schools to have “2 hours of PT and games each day” – leaving aside the question how you would fit in all the other lessons they have to undertake to pass the numerous assessments and exams they have to endure, I think if you forced non-athletic kids into prolonged sports lessons you would turn off far many than you turn on
- http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone
  
  I’ve been wondering about Johnson’s desire to inflict sport on children for 2 hours each day - if he is so convinced of the benefits why isn’t he following his own recommendation?
  
  But I suppose it’s an example of a habit found in many politicians – austerity imposed by a cabinet of millionaires, unnecessary war initiated by those who remain safe, exercise recommended for others by those most in need of it themselves…
- PeterBarnard
  
  Indeed, Alan G – it’s finding and then encouraging the useful talent that will pay dividends, both for the individual and for “society,” and it does not matter in what sphere that talent lies.
  
  As well, although it is rarely mentioned, luck is often incidental to “success.”
Amber Star

I know what the Tories are trying to achieve:

1. Sport not required at all, so that all their little free schools can be set up in empty shops, offices & warehouses with no sports facilities or even playgrounds.

2. Anti-union & anti-teacher sentiment by castigating teachers for not wanting to spend their evenings & weekends providing a free child-minding service disguised as extra-curricular school sport.
ThePurpleBooker

Agreed. Owen Jones need to be quiet, the man drives me up the wall just hearing him whisper.
- Alan Giles
  
  At least he doesn’t go around accusing people of being “pedophiles” (sic). That is because, unlike you, he is not afraid to put his real name to his writings, while you, who cowers behind your asinine screen name, makes foul, offensive and libelous remarks knowing (or thinking) your identity couldn’t be traced if you overstep the mark. If you read the newspapers you will know that many social network sites are now having to take a tougher line, and in some cases have to divulge the identity of people to the police.
  
  I notice you haven’t apologised for that disgusting insult, so I am now warning you publically that if you ever make sick remarks about me or other posters again, I am sending an official complaint about your increasingly disgusting behaviour to the editor of this site, together with examples of your scribblings. I hope that is clear.
jaime taurosangastre candelas

65 Medals (29 of them Gold), the most astonishing feeling of national pride, and I am sure millions of young Britons across our nation inspired to seek the best of themselves, and even if not finding it, learning something of themselves that they take into their wider lives.

There will no doubt be some miserabilists who quibble at this.

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