to not want a move towards competitive sport in primary schools

[noseynoonoo]

First off, this is not a political rant and I hope it doesn't turn into one.

I am so cheesed off about this: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19219942

The details are patchy but it looks on the surface that competitive sport such as football and netball are to be widely promoted - is there anything less motivating?

Football, is just too dull, kicking a ball around, usually with limited skill at primary level whilst netball involves 7 girls per team of which 2 stand still most of the time.

My daughter just wants to be active. I don't care if it's competitive, I just want her moving and being fit. As the second tallest girl in her class, and if teachers are as unimaginitve as they were in my day, she'll be Goal Shooter or Goal Keeper and kept within a small semicircle. My son is a little dynamo and finds football dull. I hate to think of sports being so restricted.

So, can anyone tell me that I have misunderstood where school sports is going?

The funny thing is that I'm a primary teacher and have to teach PE twice a week.
Yes. oh members of MN, it is people like me that DC is relying on to build the sporting prowess of the future.
So, no mockery of the feak and weeble from me, and no shining examples of how to throw, catch and score either.
Where are those squaddies?

I only found out the other day from a friend that at our local primary school there are no 'winners' of the races at sports day (my DS is 2 so we've not experienced them yet, and it certainly wasn't like that back in my day) - I was horrified!!! How are children going to learn to try harder if 'it's ok love, everyone's a winner' prevails. It's human nature to be competitive. Survival of the fittest!

I read the article in the same way the OP did - a return to netball, football and hockey.

What Cameron clearly doesn't realise is that state primary schools do not have specialist sports teachers. 2 of mine went to private school and their PE teachers were actual sports people, not just your form teacher. One was a professional hockey player. So you first need to recruit professional sports people as PE teachers. Where is the money coming from?

DH has said that at his primary there was no teaching of football. It was just here's the ball, play a game. I don't know if things are better now but surely children need to learn the actual rules and techniques first before playing a game?

I also think a lot of posters are deliberately misinterpreting what others are saying about bullying. I was the one always left until last with the fat kid, and the fat kid got picked over me . I was completely humiliated in PE at secondary every single lesson. Now I am overweight and do no exercise. I hate sport. I was completely uninterested in the olympics.

If in English class we had been in a mixed ability group and allowed to "pick teams" I could have got my own back, but only in sport are you allowed positively encouraged to sneer at people with no natural ability. What is wrong with separating the talented from the untalented - as we do in all other subjects - and letting the talented compete while teaching the others in a less hostile environment?

You need to be given the opportunity to try out a variety of sports. If my DD turned out to have a natural ability for - for arguments sake- water polo, we would never know, because it isn't something I'd be able to provide for her. If schools are just going to stick to football, netball, hockey and rounders then children's talents may go unnoticed and unnurtured.

I think too many people are confusing poor teachers / coaches with the whole notion of 'Team Sports'.
A good teacher / coach would never let the teams be picked, 1 by 1 by the best athletes, leaving those who are poor to stand there til last - that's nothing to do with playing team sports, that's to do with leadership skills.

My dd's school now have a FANTASTIC sports programme - ordinary state primary, and the chap who is in charge of PE is a full time class teacher, and doing this in his "spare" time. She has represented the school at football, cricket, golf, and basketball, and also done afterschool gym club and dance club. To my knowledge there are also tag rugby teams, an athletics team, and a netball team that she's not played for. His philosophy is that, if you turn up regularly for the practices / training then you play for the school, and there are loads of fixtures, wekk after week. No-one is humiliated. No-one is left out if they commit to turning up to practice. This philosohpy has given them a very full trophy cabinet. She's quite good, but no Jess Ennis, but she plays, because she is willing. To prove my point, 160 children at the school have represented the school in one sports team or another this year, it's not some elite squad.
I'd love to be able to clone him and put someone like this into every primary school in the country. That's how you encourage sport.

'It's human nature to be competitive. Survival of the fittest!'

Come back when your DS is 10 and humiliated by his peers on a bi-weekly basis.
So easy to be smug when it's not your child in the arena yet.

BackforGood

what you say about the PE teacher being a class teacher is interesting. That sounds very useful.
I wonder if PE teachers, as a breed, are not terribly good at understanding children who aren't skilled, are not good at putting sport in the context of the whole of a child's development.

Everyone: Please feel free to shout me down if you have other experiences

Hardly smug fallen caryatid if my son is not remotely interested in or good at sport then it won't bother me and I shall encourage him not to be bothered by it, but to find something else that he is good at. It does kids no good to be good at everything.

Nemo - I encourage my DS1 not to care, believe me I do, but the strength of sport , especially Football, in our culture, has really surprised me.

.... and I like sport, loved the Olympics.

Well I guess I'm going to be a pretty harsh mum then. I won't be shielding my DS from failure or what he's not good at.

Nor do I do that.

Sorry that wasn't meant to be directed at anyone other than myself. A realisation that I probably am going to be a meaner mummy than most!

It's not as black and white as being good at something or bad at something. Children come to believe, at a very young age, that not only are they not good now, but they have no potential to become good at that sport, or any other. And And that, IMO, is because of the emphasis on football.

It must be better taught

We are talking of primary school here, from the article, aren't we? Secondary is very different. But at primary are that many of the children really that horrid and bullying? And if so, why is that not tackled instead? Rather than us saying no to team or competitive sports?

As I said Nemo, come back when you have more first-hand experience and declaim 'Survival of the fittest' as a doctrine.
Come the zombie apocalypse, I'll back my two and me against the football players of the world.

fallen caryatid bully much yourself? Ok I'll go, thanks. YOU have made me leave the thread.

Eh?

I am nerd, hear me roar!

I hated PE at school, because it was just a twice weekly humiliation. The teacher embarrassed me so much once during hockey when I had been put in goal and, as much as I was trying to save the goals, some easy ones just went straight past me. At half time the teacher announced loudly to my team "You need to explain to her what the aim of the game is" and when I said I did understand the game, she said "Well it doesn't look like you do,you're just letting them in!" Obviously that did wonders for my confidence

You can't imagine kids that were terrible at maths or an academic subject being made to take part in public competitions with those who were brilliant at it, so I don't see why it should be like that with PE. I'm all for encouraging fitness in kids which is why I like that alternative things such as trampolining etc have been brought in.

I'm not against doing sport in PE, but I do think it should be in sets of similar ability. As well as avoiding humiliation, it makes it even more competitive for those who are in the top sets as they are only competing with those of a similar ability and actually gives those in lower sets a chance to have a proper go (I usually didn't get a chance as people would jump in front of me to avoid me getting the ball, or I was too scared to touch it as I knew I would mess it up)

Jamie That is not my experience at all. I've 3 dcs. The eldest tried for every team going at Primary school, and again once he moved to secondary. At the time, the teacher running the sport at the primary school was one of those who selected the same elite squad for all the games, and my ds never made any team. He never for one minute thought he wasn't good enough though - that's part of your job as a parent, pointing out that there will always be someone who can run faster, sing better, spell better, be quicker at arithmatic, but it doens't mean you are no good. He's 16 now, and still loves going to play football with his mates in the park. He's realised he's never going to make it as a professional but that it doesn't mean he can't enjoy the game. He's also aware of things he is good at, that some of his friends who are good footballers, couldn't do in a million years. That's where the parenting comes in , surely, encouraging them to have a go at lots of things, and finding the ones where they can really succeed, but building up an understanding that you can enjoy things (eg football) at your own level, without neccessarily being particularly good at them.
Totally agree with Hulbaby, that if there is a culture of bullying and children being horrible, then it's taht that should be tackled, not stopping sport, which can foster great attitudes of support and camaradarie.

I'd love to see a return of competitiveness in schools, but it needs to be across the boards - so academic, vocational, sporting etc. And the instruction must be that every child must be given the chance to shine - and that you'll suffer at Ofsted Inspection time if that hasn't been done.

Team sports aren't necessary. Team-Building is.

Drop it for KS1. There's no point - give kids toys and the space to play and they'll do so naturally. Competition at that age just sours natural enthusiam.

From KS2 onwards, kids should split into the old fashioned 'House' system and each House should compete across the board.

That'll teach competition just fine, as well as Team spirit. Points can be given for doing well in PE, but also for reading, writing, maths, singing, art, just being nice to classmates, turning in homework on time.....

And suddenly, I think I'm describing what a lot of good schools do already.

Hence, butt out Mr Cameron. What would you know about state education, anyway?

In my experience children need to have their competitiveness controlled, not encouraged!

Oh. And in my experience, "little dynamos" who find "football dull" are generally the ones who see no reason for sticking to the rules,...

The other thing that bugs me, is that this stuff is mandatory, even in the GCSE years.

I sucked at Team sports, but still had to stand around being bad at Netball and Rounders, being 5 foot nowt and incredibly short sighted, even though I was one of the fitness, most active people in the school through doing hours a week of swimming, dancing and gymnastics out of school.

Literally, I wasted 4 hours a week of my 'school-time' being bored at something I'd been bad at for years, and that I simply couldn't be good at and, therefore, understandably hated. I didn't need to 'be active' - I was. I didn't need 'exercise' - I got gallons of it.

I didn't even need the 'team' aspect of stuff - I was on every other bloody non-sport team the school had.

Still had to do four hours of netball (which does jack for fitness, btw) or cross country (running through muddy fields in cold weather in poorly chosen kit - hideously bad for the body!) with a teacher who hated me.

It was a waste of my time, and I wasn't the only one.

For me, and for a good number of my classmates, the time would have been better spent being allowed to crack on with my homework, or just reading. I was top-set academically, too, didn't need school sport to be fit, so why do it? Everyone who was good at those sports took the GCSE in the subject, so it's not like they would have lost out from a dial back.

By Year 10, it's bloody obvious where a kids skills for life lie, and time should be spent there. Maybe an aerobics or yoga class once a week for fitness purposes - but Team sport - oh, please!

Why does competitive 'sport' have to wait for the primary school? My GCs already play Piggy in the Middle, have learned to skip with a rope and play 'cricket' in the garden as well as skittles. There is always a winner and it's not always the same child. At skipping the other day, I won, beating my son who was Games Captain at a large comprehensive school! (it was only how many skips you can do before your foot gets caught in the rope).

Even when we walk towards the car in a quiet car park, it's 'Last One to the Car is a Green Pig'.

BackforGood - Oh yes, I do my best. He's a bit negative by nature, and has been bullied in the past. Being small (he's not very small) and "not good at football" is another stick to beat himself with.

When his confidence improved, one of the signs was that he started to go to Football after school - which was risky for him because he risked failure. He genuinely enjoys it, and has improved, but other children don't pass to him, and despite assurances, that everyone will get a game, he and 3 others aren't picked. This isn't some competitive leaugue team. It's an after-school club.

He's a great team player, supportive and encouraging to others - that is consistently mentioned in relation to his classwork. Those attributes aren't encouraged enough in PE.

Turns out he's got the most stamina in his class, so looking forward to Cross Country at Secondary.