Thinking sports day is awful

"Making children compete in sports they’re no good at is a sure fire way to put them off exercise for life."

Yes this was true for me!!! I exercise now but only after a 20 year gap!!

always hated sports day and still traumatised from being slow handclapped by students and parents after coming last in the 1500m! Terrible and traumatising and should be adapted for kids.

Sorry it's early- I misread about the mile and have asked for it to be deleted. What an idiot

What about kids who are neither academic or sporty?

Tomorrow even ,maybe its high time they made sports at school.more enjoyable and inclusive to.all?

Yep.My son is neither academic or sporty in fact he hates sports at schools it's always bloody football🙄
Anyway he s 16 now and leaves school timm

Same goes for kids who aren't too academically. I wish sports day was more competitive tbh. Then my child would actually get praised for once

I don't recall my dc sitting GCSEs in front of a couple of hundred spectators and then having their marks shouted out to all to hear. There is a public humiliation aspect of sports day.

But the academic dc aren't performing in front of hundreds of parents. It's completely different and I say that as a parent of 3 dc who were fine on sports day. There is a public humiliation aspect to sports day that makes it stand apart from other achievements.

Best sports days I have come across were not traditional at all. Ch were put in groups and parents followed them round as they did a carousel of activities, Olympics style, earning points as individuals. There were school teams and the team with most points (collected by individual children across several different groups) won. Bit of a faff to organise and collate points (would be much easier with tech now) but so much less pressure for the kids.

First experience of sports day and honestly isn’t it just awful for the children who aren’t fast runners?

It's no different from having to take a maths exam when you're crap at maths, or being made to do art when you're crap at that.

Sports day is an opportunity for kids who are good at running and jumping to shine, just like GCSEs are great for good scholars.

What they do is place the best work at eye level and the bad handwriting, short pieces of work high up on the display.

If the aim is to celebrate and champion sport then rewarding only the ones who are best at it, is counter-productive.
Celebrating and championing sport would be showing that everyone can do it and that it doesn't need to be competitive; that no-one is judging you because the point of sport and exercise is to be healthy, fit and have fun. The fact that so many people hate sports day proves that it doesn't work as an 'advert' or 'encouragement' into sport.
Lots of primary and junior schools have worked hard to create fun sports days. Some of that ingenuity needs to be applied as the DCs get older too.

Too many obese kids around sport and exercise needs to be championed and celebrated wherever possible

Yes but exercise doesn’t have to be competitive sport. Making children compete in sports they’re no good at is a sure fire way to put them off exercise for life.

I know it doesn't work that way.

But having parented a school refuser who started refusing due to daily humiliation through learning differently (undiagnosed dyslexia and sensory issues through ASD) I don't think that sports day is that much of a big deal tbh.

I'd hazard a guess that those who are saying that sports day is the ultimate humiliation don't have children who have been broken by a school system that tests speed of spelling or tests maths in a noisy environment (rock stars times tables anyone?).

Add to that these children don't win the prizes for best work or get pen licences and all of their peers know this.

I know fully well that some of those children will also be average at sport but some might shine.

So no I don't have a major amount of sympathy with those who say that not winning a race is humiliating for their child (them).

Doesn't work that way that you're great at one or the other, spare a thought for those of us who were average at both 😄

Saying that I know two teens if my friend who love a certain sport and are bloody great at it but school don't offer it (no schools do) so they continue to feel crap at sports day every single year and always will despite being great in another sport context. School sports day is shit and definitely needs a rehaul!!

Haven't read the thread but I'm guessing there'll be loads of comments about 'resilience' lol.

Children need to learn that some people are good at different things. Should we get rid of academic evaluations (projects, exams, and so on) because some students aren’t academic? Should we cancel all school performances because some kids can’t sing? It’s healthy and good for a child’s development to learn and understand that 1) everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and 2) sometimes in life they will have to do things that they don’t like and aren’t best at.

Great message!

teach them about personal bests. My youngest has started swimming and is not very fast but we talk about how she was
faster than her time last week, she is improving which is the point if you’re not a superstar

Exactly !

Don’t worry it won’t last long.
They can sit on the sidelines and avoid it all when they get to senior school.
They will survive and be all the better for it.

This.
We cannot always opt out when things get hard .... I did sports day my whole life and I was last in cross country every single time... I was a terrible runner - It did not damage my self esteem - I knew I could do other things well and my parents encouraged me not to " opt out" - I thank them.

It’s convenient to come out with this argument. But it’s complete bollocks. Humiliating children does not build resilience. It builds humiliation, shame and low esteem. But you crack on in your fantasy land where you think it’s great for non sporty kids to be institutionally and publicly shamed and lose their dignity on an annual basis.

Love this! 👆

I used to hide in the bathroom on sports day as a teenager and if my children don't want to do sports day I'll let them have the day off.

The academic equivalent would be having all children on stage to do timed sums in front of the entire school plus parents. It just doesn't happen.

Interestingly, the children who were academic were often mocked in school for being geeky, while nobody said a word about the children who weren't, because it wasn't cool to do well academically. On the other hand, the kids who were sporty were deemed cool by default, while the non-sporty kids were mocked for being shit at sport. I'm not sure if I went to particularly strange school but that's just how it was. A lot of people on here are talking about how academic kids are always praised and sporty kids deserve a chance to be praised, too - I'm not sure what kind of Enid Blyton schools you went to but in a lot of schools being academic in itself is enough to draw derision from classmates!

Bad memories of PE and sports day have set me up with a bad relationship with exercise for life as I associate it with humiliation. I will encourage my children to have a healthy relationship with exercise that doesn't involve being ridiculed by their peers.