Should sports day be optional?

I dont think the day should be optional but the format in many schools needs rethought to be more rounded and running races should be optional or have private qualifying rounds before the day.
the day should include some team games some “field” events and target based like boules and some cooperative team games like tug of war. The day should be a well rounded celebration of sports and activity and genuinely accessible to all.

Yes, it should be optional.

General PE/exercise should be compulsory, but a competitive event in front of parents, when children feel humiliated, doesn't encourage a love of sports/exercise.

It also doesn't teach resilience to simply be routinely humiliated, which is what often happens. There's no 'teaching' involved. If children were taught how to improve at sports, were allowed to do non-competitive activities, were given optional chances to compete in races at the right level, and actively taught about sportsmanship and helped to come to terms with feeling bad about not winning something, that would be different. But many sports days are not like this. They involve humiliation, year after year, in front of an audience, and the experience of coming last (and in some cases, the active feeling of others that the academic children who happen to be bad at sports need 'taking down a peg' by showing them they are bad) is just supposed to in itself teach resilience. I think is just teaches them to hate sports, to hate competition, and to feel bad about themselves.

Let children who enjoy competitive races do them in public with an audience. The others can do non competitive activities, or activities without the whole school watching, or get actually taught how to run/jump better, or learn to find other physical activities fun so that they might carry them on in future.

This is true. The sportiest boy (by a fair margin) in my DS year is also one of the cleverest (in every subject).

It really isn't.

No but in a school that stamps on that kind of name calling day to day, and emphasises teamwork and doing your best over winning on sports day it's much less likely.

I'm intrigued at how many people seem to think its either/or or mutually exclusive - Academic ability v sporting ability;
Johnny really struggles with Maths but won the running race by miles
Poppy can solve quadratic equations in her sleep but will be likely be last.

In reality there are plenty of kids who are decent at both, lots of very average kids who don't shine at either and some who struggle with both academics and sports!

I think sports day is relatively unique in that parents watch and often there are medals (although this is rarer now)

The drama performances are also watched, but they dont make a child that can't sing have a solo. They generally get to hide in a group or do the lights.

Therfore, i think a competitive sports day with spectators should be for people who want to do it

I think you could have a sports event that was internal though. I dont think coming last matters in that situation, as its right that its easy to see who is not academic or not creative so its nice for some people to get a chance to shine or be not the best.

Ok but the academics comparison is closer to PE lessons than sports day. I was a slow runner, my peers knew I was a slow runner from our PE lessons just as I knew X struggled with maths from our maths classes. We didn’t have a whole day dedicated to publically showing the world she was crap at maths too though.

And for those of you saying ‘it’s lovely and supportive’… 20 years ago I came last in the one mile race at sports day. By quite a margin. The entire crowd was cheering for me to finish. They all would probably describe that as a ‘supportive’ experience. Good for them. I was the one running it and it was utterly humiliating. I didn’t care that they meant it nicely, it felt so embarrassing to have the focus of hundreds of people on me as I fucked something up.

I also hated sports day as a child, I was asthmatic and slow and always came last. I still remember the humiliation.

My childrens primary school has a really great sports day set up. There is a morning event for p1 to p3 and afternoon P4 to p7.
The 3/4 years are divided into mixed age teams. They collect points at sporty stations.
The kids win or lose as a team together. It's great. All the kids really enjoy it.

My oldest has just went to high school and it's the old method and she hates it.

I think it needs to be re- thought out in many schools. I understand what people are saying, that some kids are sporty but not academic and some are academic and not sporty but it’s the public aspect of sports day that makes it difficult for children who aren’t good at it. No one watches kids come last in maths test.

i taught in a school and we did a round robin situation. Kids Would be in age related groups of 12 and then we would do 3 groups of 4 and do javelin, fun obstacle races, throwing etc. parents followed their child around so it wasn’t every single Ks2 parent watching every race. It was a bit tricky for parents with more than one child in the juniors but it wasn’t a massive field so they could watch 2 at a time. Most kids ended up with at least a third place sticker in something.

my dc primary school, everyone watches the races but they’re grouped in ability. They do make this quite obvious with the fastest 4 going first and then the next 4 and so on until you get to the slowest 4. However you’ve got a good chance of getting a sticker and the younger kids don’t realise they’re grouped by ability. They also do fun relay races with funny dress up aspects to them so it’s not all serious and competitive. Still probably a hard day for those who hate sport and feel self conscious though

Yes, probably.
My DD ended up helping the results and scoring team instead. We had years of sports day meltdowns before the school let her avoid it.

Important point.

These threads always involve people setting it up as a chance to shine for the sporty kids who don't do well academically. Actually, there's no correlation between high academic and low sporting ability, or vice versa. Some people are just brilliant at both, and some good at neither.

It really isn’t the case that all the dc who are struggling with maths get to shine on sports day.
I would also say that it’s a very small minority of kids who are super sporty and academically struggling. Most sporty kids at my dc school are doing absolutely fine academically and many excel is sports and academics. And there are plenty dc who don’t do well at maths and also come last in sports day.

The thing with the academics and sports comparisons is that we have a system where we do actually need the exams to do a lot of things later on. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it's the system we have.

Whereas we do not have a system where sports day is needed for anything. It clearly doesn't foster a climate of exercise in adults, when you look at exercise levels.

You can’t please everyone.

You could have it that heats/selection are behind closed doors, then only the ones that want to compete will be “on show”.

But some might still be upset that their parents weren’t there and they didn’t get to race.

Our school had “fun” races as well as competitive races - 3 legged and egg and spoon etc. But if you’re not sporty, you’re unlikely to somehow be good at these either. And they take tortuously longer. At least flat races are over quite soon.

My children didn’t enjoy it. They were sanguine about coming last though. They totally expected to, so that part didn’t upset them.

I was always last too. I personally hated that the parents would shout encouragement and clap me the loudest. It felt that it was drawing attention to me more.

But some children probably enjoy being acknowledged and encouraged.

I don’t think it should necessarily be optional though. Most things at school aren’t optional after all!
I think I think the best way is grouping by ability a bit. Get rid of the humiliating “fun” races that take up lots of time.
Let the slower ones race against each other, then it doesn’t look so obvious, and some of them can still win a medal.
Or maybe split sprinters and longer distance runners, again slower ones might do better over a longer race. It could be going on at the same time as the sprints.

I hated sports day but that's like saying a geography part of the curriculum should be optional

Children that excel in anything usually get a mention in the school newsletter.
If you're particularly sporty chances are you do sports outside of school as well - most primary school sport is group participation rather than specialist or technical skills - you you could show or celebrate your award/certificate in assembly, or have it published in the newsletter. Ditto drama, music, chess or anything else that children are good at!

Sports day is optional at DCs secondary school and in DDs class at least, almost all the girls choose not to participate . They simply wear their house colours and cheer on those who chose to do it. No parents involved

Our secondary school did an optional sports day, now I think of it. I was not sporty but I liked being involved so I volunteered to set up events and basically marshal. The really sporty children had a great time competing. I liked that approach.

They have to do the academics every day though. Day in day out getting sums wrong and struggling to read aloud while your classmates fly ahead. A weekly spelling test where you get them wrong or everyone is aware that you have the different, easier, list of words to learn.

Yes sports day is more public, but it's one day. One single day all year.

And if the school gets it right (which surely most do these days!) it's a day of fun and teamwork and cheering for everyone. Even 30 years ago my complete lack of talent didn't come anywhere near public humiliation.

And then the next day, I was back to getting everything right in class, and the girls who won the races were back to struggling. I wasn't the one who was hard done by.

Then it’s not about parents being there, it’s about kids being there. The same kids that see their peers struggle with reading and times tables on a daily basis. We don’t let kids opts out of academics because they might get called thick by their classmates…

That's true. But for academic subjects, music, art etc there is no public humiliation of those who struggle. Awards are given to those who do well, and their achievement is celebrated, but we don't ask those who did worst to stand up have their lack of ability recognised publicly. At many sports days every child has to take part in something and those who come last are seen to do so very publicly (and in some cases moaned at or worse by their house for not doing better).

Personally, I think we should have sports days but they should either be optional or there should be some competitive events for the sporty kids to shine and other 'have a go' non-competitive type events so children can try new activities and perhaps find something they enjoy. I think we need to encourage all children to find some physical activity that they enjoy, so that there's more chance of them being fitter as adults. Traditional sports days just put non-sporty kids of all sports. Just as I'm sure it would put non-academic kids off any sort of life long learning if their experience at school was having their failures publicised.

Absolutely not!! It's so important for everyone's well being that children partake in sport and realise that life has elements of competition. The day they make sports day optional is the day I die!

School can't control what the kids call you on the day and afterwards.

It's not at all like that. The relevant comparison would be opting out of PE as a subject entirely.

Also, the environment in the UK that has created a majority overweight adult population is one where sports day has been compulsory for most adults schooling. It evidently hasn't worked!

I wasn’t good at sport, but I enjoyed the trip out. We got to talk, sit in the sun etc. enjoyed calling on friends. Lots of races were silly enough to be won by anyone, sacks, egg and spoon, monkey crawl, strange obstacles.
By high school there was an interesting range, long jump , shot put, javelin etc. interesting to experience it all.
It was generally a bit of a jolly and we had a laugh , there was no real kudos to winning and most of us left not noticing who had won.
When I taught most children seemed to act the same. We had children in wheelchairs ace egg and spoon for obvious reasons, children with dyspraxia win monkey crawls etc. We swapped it up each year for fun and to have something everyone had a chance in, a lot was silly too. Teacher races were popular and we’d ham it up.
I think the angst was mainly parental ehe it did rise up