Should sports day be optional?

[Nothinglefttosaynow]

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.

No, but it should be team based and with lots of fun activities rather than just who is the fastest runner.

I have a DC with a health condition which makes sports hard. The infants sports day was all team relays, obstacles and low stamina races which DC enjoyed. Juniors is all running they will have to sit out.

I think there should be a mix of both with a real emphasis on the team part of sports as at primary level building teams and health competition is more important that the fast athletic (tall because of good timing on a growth spurt) kid proving they are the best. Again.

At my DD's school all students had to perform on stage in a school play. Parents and grandparents were the audience. No one was allowed to opt out of that so Sports Day should be no different.

That certainly wasn't the case in my school. You'd play on "teams" but it was casual and the emphasis was on improvement not "winning". Swimming was more about achieving certain distances - your time was irrelevant. We also did a lot of things like life-saving, treading water or non-competitive learning.

You also get grades for academic subjects so I'm not sure why getting a grade for PE is relevant.

My kid would opt out by being off school.

I wouldn't ban it. I would expand it to include non-competitive physical activities as well as competitive ones and allow children to choose.

These arguments have both been made and rebuffed at length on the thread already. For the following reasons.

One, there's no direct maths equivalent of sports day. Tests would only be that if they happened in front of the whole school plus potentially parents and relatives, and if everyone knew the exact ranking order after the test had finished. They aren't comparable.

And two, some kids are good at academics plus sports, whereas some kids are good at neither. Should we make these groups both sit out, and have sports days as a balancing exercise solely for the kids who are high achieving at one and low achieving at the other?

Yes this attitude has really struck me on this thread - academic kids must be bad at sport, sporty kids must be bad at school, and noone is good at both or neither. What a weird way to look at the world!

That’s what PE classes are for.

Shall we have annual maths tests performed in front of the whole school and all the parents?

At DS's school, they have lots of team events, including some 'silly' ones (like passing cups of water down the line to a bucket at the end). And the whole thing focusses on their team, rather than individuals winning (so they get points depending on where they finish, and then those are added up and the winning team is announced at the end). I really like it, it feels very inclusive of everybody, regardless of their ability.
The kids ALL seem to love it - there are a few children with disabilities that make running etc difficult for them - they participate as well, and the kids all go mad encouraging and cheering them across the finish line - there's never any sense of 'embarrassment' at being last, just a sense of achievement at having done it.

When is the annual school maths day?

Yes it should be optional. The kid who can’t sing isn’t made to try in front of parents, the kids who can’t do maths (or rote learn) aren’t forced to recite times tables in front of parents etc. it was such a relief when we moved to a school where kids chose what events they entered for sports day & there were lots of fun & team events as well a running races. No more ritual humiliation!

My DS isn’t sporty at all (not for lack of trying bless him!). The sports days at his school are in teams. So a couple of kids from each year make up a team, so if they win they win as a team and if they come last they do so as a team. I much prefer it like this and it means DS enjoys it even though he’s not the fastest/most athletic.

The kid who can’t sing isn’t made to try in front of parents,

What about school plays or assemblies where parents are invited?

I dunno about you, but I for one have never been to any assembly where all the DC who can't sing well are nonetheless made to do so in a manner that makes it clear exactly how well they sing compared to anyone else. How would that even work? The whole class singing a song together certainly isn't it.

Well, that was certainly the case when I was at school - everyone had their own individual lines and it was pretty clear that Jane struggled more than Tom or that Fred was being prompted by someone, or that Emma got more lines than anyone else every single time.

Everyone sang individually? I'm not sure that's a common model these days then, tbh. Which is good.

I don’t think it should be optional but it should be inclusive eg. For those who don’t want to run maybe a football or netball game instead where the spotlight is less on them.

Fuck me, must've been a small school, would have taken about 25 years at DD's schools.

I HATED primary school sports day with its forced participation but I remember High school sport days as more akin to the Olympics - all the heats etc had been done as part of the normal Pe classes so the only kids racing on the day were the good ones - rest of us still had to go and watch - house pride and all that.

I sympathise OP I hated it at school - my school days were back in the 70s/80s I never remember a parent there at senior school in the 80s, I vaguely remember some parents at the infants 1970s style sack and egg and spoon type affairs. I think I forgot my PE kit when I was about 5 or 6 and had to do the entire day in just brown pants. Understandably this really did put me off for life!

I think marshals/assistants/water bottle filleretc should be roles with sports day.

I genuinely can’t think of a situation in my adult life where there are elements of competition that I’m forced to participate in. There’s job interviews but I’ve never been to one where they’ve said “Luton/Jim/Sarah, your answers were a load of crap so we’re going with Bill for the role”, you don’t get the job but very often you don’t even see the competition. Same with exams, no one else knows what you got unless you tell them.

I used to belong to a gym and worked with a PT to lose weight. Had 1-2-1 sessions. They got an assault bike and he made it part of my workout one day. At the end of the time, he showed me on the whiteboard a list of peoples names and the calories they’d burned in 3 minutes and how I could improve and that I should have done better than xxxx.
I told him in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else did, I was there to lose weight for me and was less than interested in trying to ‘beat’ anyone else.

I'm not and never have been competitive. I’ll play board games but really don’t care if I win or not.

Same. In fact, high school sports day was probably one of my favourite days of the year! We all got bussed down to the athletics centre and those of us who weren’t doing anything used to bring magazines and we’d sit round on the grass reading and doing each other’s hair!

Even then though, the places for events had been selected in class but the PE teachers used to try and threaten you’d be made to do an event, even if not selected in class if they thought you hadn’t “tried hard enough”. No. Just fuck off.

At my child's school everyone attends sports day, but they are not forced to compete. Most children do choose to take part in at least one race, those that don't will support and cheer on their friends, and are often given little jobs to do by Teachers. They also take this approach with school productions, children are encouraged to take part and the vast majority do but those who really don't want to are given a backstage role such as doing the lights/music, making props or posters or helping paint the set. I support this way of doing things 100%.

My DD is Autistic and has poor gross motor skills. She has to do PE twice a week, which she finds stressful, difficult and at times embarrassing. But we tell her she needs to do it as PE is part of the curriculum and exercise is important. I get the arguments about "resilience" on this thread but I am of the view that being publicly humiliated by having to compete in front of the whole school, and their parents is not something my DD should have to deal with when day to day life is already challenging for lots of reasons. I have never really bought into the idea that children being embarrassed in public is character building or teaches them a life lesson. I imagine it could easily put them off exercise for life though. The sporty kids absolutely deserve their chance to shine, but my DD and others not competing doesn't take anything away from them.

Forcing kids to compete in sports day or perform in a school play doesn't prepare them for adult life. As an adult, no one would force me to get up in public and sing a solo or compete in a public sports competition against my will. If my employer did try to make me do something like that and told me I needed to work on my "residence" I could probably take them to a Tribunal. I never understand why people think children should be held to a higher standard than adults.

The day they make sports day optional is the day I die!

Bit dramatic.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but its already optional in some schools. To my knowledge, no one has perished because of this.