Should sports day be optional?

For some kids it not coming last that bothers them anyway. That wasn’t the reason my daughter didn’t like it.

There’s also prizes for effort and the kids aren’t ordered best to worst for English. My kids primary didn’t have a winner of they spelling test. Kids had spellings based on their ability,

Just because a child isn’t good at Maths, doesn’t mean they’re good at sport.

I don’t think anyone wants to stop sports day, they just think it should be optional.

In my daughters secondary school where it’s optional, about 70% of the year choose to take part. I presume it’s the same for other years.

It does feel like there is a lot of projection here. There’s a lot of talk about ridicule and humiliation.

I probably came last (or close to last) in every sports day event I ever took part in. I have zero recollection of being ridiculed or humiliated as a result. It was just a measure of my ability - my ability being not very good. That didn’t say anything about me as a person.

I was top of the class academically though, so it taught me how to lose and how to cope in a scenario where I had to do something I didn’t enjoy and how to cope with failure. Things that I didn’t learn in my comfort zone of a class room. All critically important life skills that I didn’t enjoy learning, but now I am incredibly grateful for.

I still now try to step out of my comfort zone and so things I’m not very good at, as I’m high performing in my (largely academic) career and I really think life skills are learnt when you’re wrong, or last, or the worst at something.

I do not associate that with ridicule or humiliation, no matter what scale I do it on. And sometimes it has been presented to hundreds of people in a foreign language and totally forgetting how to construct a sentence. Not a pleasant experience, but one I learnt from.

Why do children associate losing a low stakes race that someone has to lose with being humiliated?

There's always going to be winners and losers, that's something kids know already. I don't think it's coddling to structure a sports and games day to suit all abilities and have a mix of proper races and fun, silly, laugh your head off, activities for kids who don't want to compete. Isn't the aim to get kids moving? If its not fun, you've failed.

The cleverest girl at our school was awful at sport. She was bullied relentlessly for being "nerdy" wearing glasses, being overweight, not being pretty etc, she didn't come to school on non uniform days or occassionally she did, but wore school uniform. She might have been top of the class every day but I doubt she considered it her "chance to shine"
I was seen as a swot at school and wasn't especially popular either, although not bullied.

Conversely the sporty children were usually pretty popular regardless of their ability in the classroom. And that is the case in DC school too.

No, but the whole school gets to watch when Susie wins the English prize (again) and the whole class knows when Toby wins the spelling test (again).

Children who struggle with academics have to struggle for 5-6 hours a day, five days a week. Why shouldn’t those who excel at sport get their chance to shine too?

There does need to be consideration of children who struggle with the dynamic of sports day (common with autistic children) and those who are hopelessly, ritually last by a long margin every single time.

And please, check children can skip before expecting them to do a skipping race. And don't send them stomping back for the rope when they dumped it at the start line after everyone finished while they were still getting tangled up in an attempt to fling it around their body and jump simultaneously.

Most children should be able to take part though. DS's school breaks it into smaller groups which is better than whole class.

Shudders at the memory of "team" sports. It turns out the the bollocking you get for accidentally setting your science experiment on fire is less than the roasting for being unable to throw, catch or run.

Astonishingly, I did get into running in adulthood, but that's because social media confirmed that everything that was "taught" in PE was wrong. Slow is good. It's the foundation for stamina that can then lead to speed. Ranting at wheezing children to speed up is not the way to make them fitter or faster.

No, and I say that as someone who absolutely hated sports day.

Why should non-sporty children get to opt out and stay at home whereas non-academic children have to struggle in everyday?

And to answer the points about exams not being done in front of everyone - maybe not, but award assemblies are, and newsletters are there for everyone to see - as is all the "best" academic work that goes on the walls or in the corridors.

Our primary had a lovely way to do sports day - they mixed the two year groups (exception was reception class) so say yr5&6 and did a mixture of activités - the sprinters of similar times all ran together. They then did alternative type activities - throwing a ball or hop skip, building a tower. It was always was a lovely couple of hours very chilled.

Secondary you choose to put yourself forward for an activity. And the day was made more about fun and team work.

I don't think that, but you'll struggle to find a primary school kid who doesn't think that. That said, DC1 was fit and active but often came last or nearly last but took it very well. I think that's the exception rather than the rule though.

Spectacularly missing the point there.

Does sports day happen every day?

Why do you all see coming last as failing?

I'm in my late 30s and didn't learn "resilience" from having to do sports day, I learned I was shit at sports and shouldn't do it. I wonder why I got fat in my 20s?

At my school the kids who were good at sport were celebrated for it and those of us who were good at things like academic stuff or music were encouraged to keep it quiet lest we make the less able kids feel bad about themselves. How does that help anyone? Those kids won't have careers now in running faster than everyone else, and meanwhile it's taken me years not to feel like an unbearable show off at work when I admit I know something useful.

Does the French lesson happen in front of the rest of the school? Does the whole school get to watch little Jonny struggle with his spelling?

DD2 is severely dyspraxic. Her Reception sports day we had someone's grandfather openly howling with laughter at her attempts to participate in events.

This little girl is the most phenomenally resilient child you would ever meet - kept falling and getting back up and finished as last as you can possibly get - but this twat kept howling with laughter at her.

At the moment she'd choose to join in with it still, but if she ever decided she didn't want to - I'd back her 100% of the way.

I can see why there is this thinking as no one wants to see their child upset.

But throughout life no one can be protected at all times. When a work colleague is awful, when you don’t get the job you want, when your love dumps you. If a child is totally cherished and never ever upset then how will they handle upset as an adult.

I was mediocre at sports and never won a race but it shouldn’t be optional.

I'm undecided on this...

The view that academic kids get their chances to shine, sporty kids get their chances in sports day has a few problems. Firstly as pps have said, the public nature of sports day is not the same as eg SATS results, which are not publicly announced. And, it ignores the fact that if a kid isn't great at maths, it doesn't necessarily mean they are great at sports instead - they could "fail" twice from their point of view. In fact, from experience the most sporty kids are also often among the more academic ones, although my 'sample' isn't big enough to draw real conclusions from that. Just to say that it doesn't necessarily follow that its sports or academics - often it's both, or neither.

I loathed sports day in primary school, it was horrible being forced from a young age to do things I was crap at publicly. PE was also a boring nightmare repeatedly doing rounders and other games letting the whole team down. It really put me off sport.

Secondary school sports day was much better. You basically got to spend the day milling round in the sunshine with friends (we weren't made to sit with our class), and they had lots more individual type events like javelin where you went one at a time and got points based on how far it went, rather than being directly pitted against one another. They also emphasised you didn't have to do anything, but got one house point for every event you participated in - so me and unsporty friends would wander along to events and have a go and contribute a few points to our houses by the end of the day.

PE lessons also got better by year 10 when we could choose what we did to some extent, but I still hated sport/PE.

Yet by the age of 20, much to everyone's surprise, I was at outdoor college, regularly walking in the hills, climbing, kayaking, etc. Turns out I didn't hate all physical exercise, just PE lessons and the way it was taught at school. (I always known exercise was necessarily and was self conscious of my weight so walked everywhere but had seen it as a necessary evil!)

Now 20 years since those sports days, I am slim and fit, exercising regularly and eating well. It's not school sports days that will help people have a healthy attitude to exercise - they put me off for a long time.

Children don’t generally have to perform in front of the class for Maths or French though. Rightly so.

This.
Resilience isn't built by humiliation.
If the setup is about games rather than pure competitive races, then yes, I'm all for it. Tug of war, brilliant. Space hopper race, even better. Crawling under net on obstacle course, lots of fun.
Line up against 7 other kids and run as fast as you can for 100m and come in miles behind everyone else? Yeah, the fun is pretty much absent, isn't it?

Incorrect and irrelevant comparison.

What? 🤣 I loved sports day. I play a competitive sport now and exercise most days.

Both if my kids are sporty, but one hated sports day so I didn’t send her. No projection, no drama.

I hated sports day at school with a passion. Though my school house won it the 3 years I did it in the juniors. One year, it rained most days in late May and June (my school broke up at end June) that we had no sports day! Yippee! I was that kid that finished last. But for some unknown reason when I was at high school, I decided to throw the discus with my left hand - I'm right handed and my late DGM was left handed and was called up to do the area sports and I finished 3rd in the discus throwing left handed. Not thrown a discus since.

Another thing related to sports/PE is the dreaded beep test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-stage_fitness_test Unsure schools do this today. It was horrible, for asthmatics. You ran between two points before you heard the beep played on tape (probably a MP3 file on teachers' phones or tablets) and the gap between decreased slightly each time. I was forced to do a few more shuttles than my body could take. This caused my first asthma attack. Ambulance called and was ok not to go to hospital. Each week when the beep test was done, one kid fell ill.

I remember dreading sports day as a child, I was slow & awkward and always near the end if not last. It was public embarrassment for me & I dreaded it. My nephew has sports day next week & is already worrying about it. He is fit and healthy but not a fast runner & has come last for the past 3 years. I absolutely agree with kids taking part in sport at school & at home, but I wonder if forcing kids who clearly don't enjoy it to participate in front of a crowd is fair.

That's how some kids feel about maths lessons all the time, or French, or music, or science. No, it shouldn't be optional.