To think that the tories should leave school sport well alone

[ReallyTired]

The UK has more medals that it has ever had the olympics for a long time. Surely the UK's PE teachers must have done something right. I feel that tories should not be micro managing how schools teach PE.

The majority of medals were won by people who attended state schools.
I also suspect that many of the olympicans who attended private schools had sports scholarships and prehaps thats why private schools are over represented.

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2012/aug/06/team-gb-medal-winners-background#school

Our teachers do a good job and primary school sport should not be messed about with. I would rather the governant provided more funding for after school clubs than force primaries to do competitive sport.

Not everyone needs/wants after school clubs

I'm all for more sports in schools...mainly for the fact so many children are not allowed to play out in the streets or the parks.

Anything that gets kids moving about more is a good thing in my book.

YANBU. Just more bollocks to berate teachers with.

"Not everyone needs/wants after school clubs"

Completely agree, after school clubs should be optional.

If a child wants to do competitive sport then let them go to an after school club. If they don't want to do competitive sport then I don't see the point in forcing them to.

Given the fact that the governant has removed the requirement that schools do at least two hours of sport then any sport will have to an after school club in many schools.

Well, they are and they aren't. They say they're going to announce a new curriculum (better reserve judgement on that until the whole thing is out, rather than the dreadful Dave's soundbites).

But they're also abolishing the detailed prescriptive stuff, like how long the lessons must be. And that's quite an important hands off - it will now be up to the teachers to show it's safer in their hands as they will be more able to exercise their professional judgement in providing a balanced timetable.

I think our haul of medals shows that sport in the UK is in quite a healthy state. Look at Australia and France, for instance.

Just bring back competitive sports days and I'll be happy.

This is coming from someone who has a dc that is rubbish at sport but needs to learn how to lose graciously!!!

Surely a lot of the improvement (re medals) is down to funding? Since UK sport has had access to lottery funding our medal tally has improved dramatically. Cutting the school sports partnerships from 2013 is not going to help.

Fuck the Tories. I hate the fucking bastards.

The tories should just leave everything alone

xposted with sostressedsostressed

I think the SSP was more important for introducing children to sports that they might enjoy (i.e. it's not all about being crap at football and hockey).
Watching my class doing street dancing was brilliant - and several joined the club for after school lessons.
That was what SSP was all about - participation in some sort of exercise that you can enjoy. And it was brilliant. Shame on the tories for not realising that.

(Also petty - agree that lottery funding has been great for big projects)

If all they're going to suggest is 'football' DS is not going to be happy. He hates football.

Every after school sport's club, bar one, that my DC attended at Primary school were done by outside company brought in to school site. The quality of the PE they were taught was pretty shit, TBH. Not to mention cancelled for weeks on end in the run up to School plays or SATs.

The provision might be good in some places, but it is not true in all.

I was going to say it's a flaming cheek of the Tories to get all enthusiastic about school sports after shutting down the school sports partnership, but see you are all way ahead of me.

Interesting to see the knee-jerk politician response of 'I'll tell schools what to teach' still coming from them, even though the policy they are enforcing is to make all schools become academies. Which do not have to follow orders from HM Government, allegedly. (I am deeply cynical about this - suspect they are just swapping accountability to LEAs for accountability to central Government.)

Children should do sport every afternoon at school.

I absolutely hated PE at school, and we didn't have all that everyone wins crap then. But doing cross country running in winter was shite. I would have been so much happier given the choice of either PE or reading in the library.....know which one I would have picked.
Not ALL kids want to be the next olympic hero.

Yabu. The Tories make up a significant part of our government. People voted Cameron in and probably will do again in the next election (minus Clegg). Therefore they SHOULD be involved in school sport. Whether or not you like their proposals is another issue...

DC has the wrong end of the stick. The real aim of school PE is to help kids keep healthy. The fun sports offered under the SSP were great for that.

It can't all be about competition - and everyone who has been crap at PE will know (and understand) that the kids who are good at sport do not want you on their team!! :)

Indian dancing, street dancing, tri-golf, basketball, Braziian football..... let them experience it all!

I think everyone should be compelled to do sport. A lot of children struggle with English and maths and hate it, but no-one says that should be optional. And honestly, a good healthy lifestyle is much better and more useful than maths for most people - better for the economy as well

SirChris do your DC's schools not have competitive sports days then? I have worked in 5 schools in 5 counties over 22 years and all had them. I have always assumed the 'no competitive sports day' thing was another Sun/Daily Fail myth.

Completely agree, flexy. I don't recognise the 'all shall have prizes' myth either. My kids are fit and healthy, but shite at sport. They don't get prizes. Not a problem. Even if the school wasted time manufacturing fictional wins for them, it wouldn't make them any more likely to be picked for a team.

YANBU. Too much unequal and unhealthy competition too early in life will just put kids off sport (and exercise) for life and make a lot of kids very miserable.

It seems bizarre Cameron is using the Olympics, in which we did relatively poorly in "traditional" team sports but brilliantly in all sorts of other sports, to try to push "traditional" team sports.

And what's wrong with Indian dancing? It won't get an Olympic medal, but it might make for better performing arts - which is another area of pride and economic success for Britain.

Totally agree the reason we have loads of medals this year is because of lottery funding of elite athletes. If we want to keep this up (and we ought to at least ask ourselves why we want to punch so far above our weight in the Olympics) then we need to continue funding elite athletes and improve funding to grass roots clubs where the athletes come through. Making kids play netball and football under the tutelage of primary school teachers isn't going to do anything to improve our medal chances.

If we want to encourage kids to engage in physical activity in order to stay healthy it doesn't matter if it's hockey, BMX or dancing. But enjoying it matters a lot.