Gender-segregated races at primary school sports day

Well, that's a question isn't it? Why do girls outperform boys? Are they naturally worse, or is it expectations/restrictions?

my son weighs about 18kg - his best mate probably weighs twice that - in the races they did the smaller kids had an advantage going through the tunnels, the taller kids had an advantage in a straight sprint, and the heavier kids had no advantage at all (perhaps they would have if there was some kind of strength based test? But I'm guessing having 6 year olds lift heavy weights would fail a risk assessment :) ) - and it all balanced out.

When it came to egg and spoon when it came to how smoothly you could walk and how sneaky you were at giving it a kick in the right direction when it fell.

The obstacle course, was won by the team that didn't forget to put the beanbag back twice, and didn't have any shoes fall off mid-race.

A good time was had by all, no need to segregate on sex still. I think that was a pretty standard infant sports day. Perhaps other schools take it rather more seriously.

At our local primary, the fastest girl has outrun the fastest boys (and the older children) since she was 8. According to a few parents, the school should rethink its mixed long-distance run because this is 'embarrassing' for the boys.

The rest are busy buying bookies' tickets for the 2024 Olympics results.

If girls and boys are equal in the early years then why do young girls underachieve in sport generally.

I wish that my daughter's school had seperation of the sexes for sport. Recently they had a fun run and children in each year who had managed to run the most laps of the field were printed in the newsletter. There was not a single girl's name as the boys are so much faster and stronger at all ages. Even nursery!

If you are going to have mixed sports then you need to include sports like gymnastics where girls tend outshine boys. My daughter can hold her bridge or do a handstand longer than the majority of boys.

"(although as I said, I don't think that makes much of a difference - even when it's inches - at 5)."

My daughter's school decided to weigh all the year 1 children. My daughter wieghs 18kgs and the heaviest boy wieghs 32kg. (So much for confidentality! eek!) Ofcourse size makes a difference.

I agree with it because I have twin boy and girl. They are more or less the same height, but age 7 he is already much stronger than her and faster. If it's fun races such as sack race and egg and spoon then yes they could race together, but at their school they have a sprint race, an overhead ball throw, a standing long jump. He would beat her at all of those, as it was she won the girls sprint by a long way and he came second in his sprint.

We just had sports day, a very small school so everyone was mixed together, and just infants, races were done by class.

Yes, the difference between the kids at the top of the year and the bottom of the year was much greater than the difference in size between girls and boys - this was less stark in the 7 year olds than in the 4 year olds.

TBH, at that age it's not exactly serious anyway, and the lack of skill/co-ordination (for balancing an egg, or jumping in a sack) is much more of a factor than the size :)

Since the sack race and obstacle course are hardly olympic events, I still don't see why you'd take the lazy route of segregating on sex so young. Just pick from a hat, or by surname, or the tables they sit at. If you want something physical, then by height (although as I said, I don't think that makes much of a difference - even when it's inches - at 5).

Not a mum, but surely, at age 5, the average differences between a boy and a girl of (say) 5 years and eleven months are going to be much smaller than those between a boy of 5 years eleven months and one of 5 years and one month? And I bet they don't separate them by age.

is this an example of the Wollstonecraft Dilemma? (sorry nothing useful to add!)

theverm, my point is not as you say "erm, pointless"

There is no set point at which most boys will outrun most girls.

It happens gradually. They will end up segregated so it seems entirely practical to do this from the outset.

I hope you, erm, comprehend this

I think you are over thinking it. I hated sport but if you think it is a good thing to encourage children and girls then setting it up so that there will be 2 sets of first, second and thirds seems more likely to encourage children than setting it up where there will just be one set..

I agree danel. The fault lies with the coaches. Most of the coaches we have encountered are awesome. Some are Terri le, in terms of their motivations, ethics etc. For some winning is the be all and end all. The coach at mixed football, totally thinks its a boys sport and barely tolerates the girls

Our girls football coach/team is flippin fantastic. We are lucky

But, Harvey, if a girl's experience at mixed sport is being spoiled by the boys refusing to pass etc., then that should be dealt with by stopping the boys' bad behaviour, and not by putting it in the too hard basket and creating new (usually smaller) spaces for the girls. Why should women/girls always be the ones pushed out?

Having read OP properly, I realise the question is actually about sports day specifically

Ours is all done in relay teams; sack race /egg n spoon/ bean bag on head etc...they are mixed teams.

They have a sprint race at the end which is individuals, which is segregated

I think my DDs school got the balance right. KS1 they did fun team events - competitive but total mix of age and sex. KS2 was also an inter-house challenge, with events like sprinting sex segregated (for which the team would choose the best athletes), I think some other sex segregated events but also some mixed group things. The girls were just as vital as the boys to the points score- as is of course the case with the Olympics which is one of the rare times we do see female athletes being given a decent share of screen time.

Also, I think views on segregation can be coloured by having all boy or all girl children

Segregation benefits girls. Mixed benefits boys

Yr5 dd is very sporty. I totally support sex segregation in sports at all ages. DD plays in a girls football team and it is brilliant. She was also selected to play for the school ad part of a mixed team. If that had been her only experience of football, she would have stopped playing. The boys wont pass to the girls, the boys give the girls a really hard time if they make a mistake or don't play well. And the teachers are constantly trying to get the girls off the pitch. Playtime football is much the same

Absolutely - I totally get and agree that segregation when their older is fine, and generally positive.

But these are tiny kids - perhaps my view is coloured because mine are still young - still so close to being babies and toddlers.

I don't see there's a need to segregate up to the end of KS1.

But in the KS2 years there are some differences in body size and strength (boys - generally - being a bit taller and stronger, until puberty strikes, and some girls start growing). Obviously, you'll get outliers (both sexes/both ways) but as you don't want one sex to dominate, then separation can help.

Different sports have differing times for when they must be segregated. I'm not sure what the rules are for children younger than eligible for U13 (when they are definitely separate).

As a feminist, athlete, mum of boys and girls and sometimes coach I really see the value in separate competion for girls. Australia seems to do pretty well in sport so good point PP. There are lots of way of rewarding success in sport including fair play awards, mixed team relays, most improved performer etc. But female achievement needs to be modelled from a young age and my own limited experience that seems to happen more with some separate events. I don't think it is harmful to do both. Maybe my experience is coloured by the fact I get so much out of doing sport with women and my daughter gets lots out of doing sport with other girls (but we both do mixed sport too)

On another point I do think being small in your year an issue and puts off many potential talents, ie Messi, probably the worlds best footballer would have dismissed as too small in the UK set up, don't have any answers for this one.

Lurcio - we are on the same page I think.

bike - boys are on average bigger - yes, given the charts, but there's more of a difference by age than by sex - DS1 has grown 2 inches in the past year - he's the youngest in his year, and he's competing against people who have had another whole year's growth. The older girls in his year are still much bigger than him as the youngest boy. Sure, the biggest kid in the year is a boy (although, it's a close run thing - the second biggest is a girl) - but the smallest is also a boy.

I don't think that saying that day to day we're together, but on special occasions you need to keep separate is a good message either.

I think we're mixing up what generally happens in schools and sports day which is a completely different beast.

Generally in schools, especially in primary, pe is more about skills and learning the basics of various sports. It's about making children aware of their health, having fun and learning tactics. There is some competitive inter-school elements too. All of it is mixed sex. None of it makes an expectation of boys over girls or vice versa.

However, sports day is essentially a show for parents and can bring out the worst in both parents and children. It can become incredibly competitive and schools are in a no win situation. Some schools have stopped sports days or banned parents in order to keep things civil. In my last school parents demanded that a running race was introduced so they could have a straight on competition. Great for some but torture for many others.

Even if a school spends all year breaking down stereotypes and encouraging good sportsmanship, it only takes one parent modelling exactly the wrong behaviour before other parents join in and the children follow suit. I'm not talking about full on aggression or blatant sexism. Just subtle enough to encourage standard gender stereotypes.

Now that may not be the case everywhere. I'm not suggesting that segregation should be the norm. I'm just saying sometimes situations call for a slightly different approach for different reasons.

There is a difference between boys and girls pre puberty though, boys are on average bigger so proportionally will perform better than girls of an equivalent age. Competitive and sport for fun are both important and I want to see girls coming back from sports day with as many medals as the boys, yes have mixed relays etc, but a straightforward race is better split on gender lines. Opportunities for sport in a single sex environment increases participation, there is a thriving women's running club in my city and plenty of men enjoy the male bonding of a five a side league. My children both love the different atmosphere they experience at single sex activities like guide and cubs( I know cubs is mixed but ds's pack is all male)

"Appropriate expression of competitiveness" - good phrase Chunky!

My experience (skewed by having a naturally competitive, sporty child) is that children will compete with one another given half the chance, and that part of the aim of the game is "appropriate expression": getting them to learn which situations are appropriate for an all-out attempt to win and which are appropriate for more cooperative behavior; how to handle the fact that you can't always win; how not to crow over your opponent when you do win; how sometimes cooperation rather than individual show-boating is actually the strategy you need for your team to win (DS complained bitterly all the way home from football club last night that no-one passed to him and as a result he'd only scored one goal). Some of my friends, on the other hand, have DC who are shy and not naturally competitive (very much as I was at school - I look at my naturally sport DS and sometimes wonder if he's a changeling!).

And it's this variation in children that makes me keen on non-competitive, or limited, team based competition in schools - but very definitely mixed gender.. Because in a country with an obesity crisis on its hands, where women are often put off doing sport (long list of reasons - social pressure not to get sweaty, lack of social pressure to give it a go, harassment while out on runs, lack of role models, the list is endless), what we need to be doing in schools, I think, is showing children that sport can be something you do for fun, that makes you feel good about yourself. I realize this may sound all a bit ILEA circa 1980, and I'm not against competition per se, just don't make it the be-all and end-all of the school curriculum. And certainly don't split along gender lines at early ages, not until puberty and changes in musculature make it necessary.

But this is KS1 - 4-7 year-olds - this is when we should be teaching them about fair competition, getting the competitiveness to be appropriately expressed - I think this is a perfect time for them to be racing together, learning to work together while they're still little and roughly the same size.

Couldn't happen in DS's school either luckily because the classes are too small - not that that stops other pointless gender splitting (looking at the 'boys' and 'girls' hampers at the school fair here...)

WhoKnows - I'm sure this goes on too! I have been "indoctrinating" () DS from an early age, but I don't doubt for an instant that there are other children pushing the boys/girls can't play with XYZ line (or indeed possibly DS at times when I'm not around - my experience with children is that consistency is not one of their primary characteristics). I had a sad experience up at my dad's last summer - DS and I got involved in a jumpers-for-goalposts game in the park with another family. Their eldest girl was absolutely bloody brilliant (I used to play Sunday league myself, and this approx 9 year old was way better than I was at my best). And her dad was great too - encouraging her, helping her with skills, and (most impressively) not making any attempt to squash her natural competitiveness. But when I chatted to him afterwards, he said they hadn't been able to find a local club for her. The nearest boys' club, the boys just refused point blank to play with her, while the nearest girls' club was too far away to fit in with the shifts he and his wife worked in terms of getting her to training.

"They did do all of the races boys first and then girls - maybe this is why I was feeling a bit annoyed about it!"

But that's the opposite way round to professional sport where women normally go first, almost as a warm up to the "main event" i.e. the men.
I can see they might do this to get exposure for the women as people might turn off after the men have finished, but it does make it seem like the men's event is the more important one.