School Sport - comments by our great leader

[flexybex]

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/08/cameron-scraps-targets-school-sport

Another way to cut the wage bill! All teachers to take it in turns to take PE lessons!

Cameron agreed, saying: "I would like to promote competitive sport ? we need more competition, more competitiveness, getting rid of the idea of all-must-have prizes and you cannot have competitive sports days. We need a big cultural change in favour of competitive sports." He also called for more sports clubs to get involved with schools.

What an absolute fucking penis that man is. Just stupid made up arrogant lies from a prick who's never been anywhere near a real school.

Wish I'd known at school that I would have got prizes and praises no matter what - I might not have spent five years trying to get out of doing any sport in front of anyone ever if only I'd known there was no competition and it really didn't matter..... OH WAIT.

But isn't sport remaining in the curriculum in exactly the same way?

So what he's doing is giving teachers and schools freedom to use their professionalism to deliver the PE curriculum in the way/s they see best, rather than by Government diktat of number of hours and minutes?

I thought freeing teachers to get on with it was a good thing?

The thing I found more worrying was a teacher being interviewed on TV news yesterday, who was saying that in recent years the total time spent on teaching student teachers (eg those going into primary school) about physical education was 6 hours.

Perhaps looking at the content of teacher training (for you can't just say "more of XYZ" without cutting out something else) might be in order? That might improve the PE situation if more time could be found (though I understand from other threads that increasing the time teaching how to teach to read might be rather more urgent).

With the 2 hours/week target being dropped, do you think teachers will chorus 'Oh jolly hockey sticks, now we can do 4 hours PE a week!' It won't make a blind bit of difference. In all local schools, in addition to the 2 hours PE in the curriculum teachers run a variety of after school and lunchtime clubs, as well as running sessions with professional coaches.

I don't think that's the issue. As ever, Cameron is showing his absolute ignorance of what's going on in schools - all the schools' leagues, the netball, football, athletics. All that competitive sport. His comments are modelled to suit the DM brigade:"I would like to promote competitive sport ? we need more competition, more competitiveness, getting rid of the idea of all-must-have prizes and you cannot have competitive sports days. We need a big cultural change in favour of competitive sports."

Also, he seems to have picked up on the fact that one of the athletes has been inspired by a geography teacher (which is fine). So, Cameron expands that little discovery he's made (no doubt on a celebrity hand-shaking exercise) to: ....urge "more teachers to give up their free time to teach sport as well as their main teaching subject. "The problem has been too many schools not willing to have competitive sport and some teachers not willing to join in and play their part."

He remains blissfully unaware that teachers do that already. In my school (15 teachers), teachers run: 2 x cross country, dance, tag rugby, athletics, netball, football, hockey and tennis, and professionals come in to take Tai Kwan Do, Judo, Multi-sports and cheerleading.

The man knows nothing about what goes on.

I would have assumed, that teachers would be able to work out what was required to deliver the PE curriculum, and SMTs work out the best way of putting that into the timetable.

It is however a nice change to see central Government timetable control being championed, and complaints about an initiative that would give teachers and schools new freedom (to increase, reduce, or stay the same as suits their situation and resources).

Not all schools offer a rich programme of additional clubs for sports (our previous one definitely didn't). And I don't see what's wrong with someone setting out their vision of what a good sports programme might look like, whilst simultaneously granting schools a new freedom that means they could do something total different.

Overall, I'm not too worried about this. But I suppose that's because I do believe in the professionalism of teachers and leadership teams in school, and that they will act in the interests of providing the best educational programme they can in their particular school.

Sign me up, too, for the "Cameron's comment's about competitive sport make him a Tosser" club.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/ennis-farah-murray-state-school-myth

"Peculiar, too, that Michael Gove is regularly heard claiming that "we need to revive competitive sport in our schools", yet among his first acts as education secretary was the axing of the £160m budget for school sports partnerships, which enabled schools to share resources and their students to access expert sports tuition (Labour research suggests that thanks to cuts, there has been a 60% drop in time dedicated to organising school sport)."

As the article pointed out, the sports partnership initiative between schools ended a couple of years ago. Our primary school classes had proper coaching and skills training during PE once a week while the class teacher had PPA. Everyone said it was brilliant, then the scheme was scrapped.

Crossed!

Yes I know it ended in 2010 but now it seems Mr C is removing the requirement for schools to teach 2hours PE per week while his minister of sport bemoans the fact that half the Bejing medal winners didn't attend state schools
Do these politicians never communicate with each other

I particulaly like the "teachers freetime" bit. Will this mean that I get some.

Lets be honest though.

He is just jumping on the success of the games.

But, mrz, you misunderstand our Dave.....
He's removing the requirement to teach 2hours PE per week, so that schools can do more..... so that they're not restricted...... to give them freedom.... blah, blah.

I agree SSP was brilliant. It was really good at fostering relationships between upper schools, sports professionals and schools. Looks like the pared down compromise might cease altogether next year.

This was my favourite comment on the article

'Why should it just be teachers who are to be slagged off for not giving up 'free time' to take sports sessions?

MPs with their excellent sports experience from their public school education should surely lead by example? If the local schools lack facilities I am sure the back lawn of the stately home would do.'

Exactly.

Who needs £160 million when teachers will do it for free in their own time because they don't have lives

Oh, and meanwhile back at the ranch, the government approves another 21 playing field sell-offs.

You couldn't make it up.

But the article does say, epeesarepointy things, that of those 21 schools who have sold off their playing fields - 14 closed down, 4 amalgamated with other schools and the remainder sold off part of their fields to improve facilities; important to have the context I think.

And actually I agree with his comments about competitive sport in schools - some of you seem to be very lucky in having great provision, but DD's 'outstanding' school is rubbish.

There is a hyperlink on the school website to 'extra curricular sport' and it takes you to the opening hours for the nearby leisure centre - the school don't offer a single sporting activity after school.

They do have teams for the major sports, so the best dozen children get to play competitively, but everyone else can go hang. They need A, B and C teams so that everyone who wants to play competitively can do so, at their own level. They also need to offer lunchtime and after school clubs for those that want them.

And yes, it is 'prizes for all' here - children volunteer for sports day events, regardless of ability or talent.

There's nothing wrong with using the Olympics to open a dialogue about how sport is promoted in schools, maybe rubbish schools like ours will sit up and take notice, or maybe some of the parents will begin to exert some pressure.

Here's one example from the Independent:

'Some of the fields due to be sold off will still be used for sporting purposes, including Kingsbury High School in north London, which has plans to lease its pitches for five-a-side use.'

I wonder how many more of the 21 fields are being sold to academies.....

Perhaps I should stop doing maths revision classes after school (which I'm good at) to make time for running a sports club (which I'd be shit at)? I mean I wouldn't want to appear unwilling to do my part

I don't understand his comments about the lack of competitive sports in schools either, kids in my school are always competing in tournaments against other schools, locally and nationally.

giraffe you don't understand - you should be doing the sports stuff as well as the maths, don't you know? Because of course teachers are lazy public sector workers who have cushy jobs and loads of holiday, so they're not working hard at all.

So do we do the extra lessons before or after the sports

During, mrz - I mean, you're a teacher, it isn't as if that's a real job, like being a disaster creating wealth creating banker... Honestly, you lost are just all falling down on the job.

silly me ... of course that makes perfect sense

Do you know what? You're all aiming too low!

It takes a real idiot genius to think outside the box and come up with the idea of having 2 hours sport EVERY DAY.

Boris Johnson on the BBC here

We could only fit that in if we slept at school.
Now, there's an idea.......

I do think the selling off playing fields thing might be a bit of a red herring. Our school is probably one of those that has "sold off" it's playing fields. Part of the land was disposed of when the school was rebuilt three years ago. But the sport facilities improved out of all recognition at the same time. Instead of a large, sloping, unmarked field, we now have a smaller, levelled field, with running track around decent, levelled grass pitch, plus an all-weather pitch marked out for tennis, basketball, netball etc. That is in addition to the two hard surfaced playground.

From my own experience, I suspect that specialist training for primary teachers and/or use of specialist staff is much more significant than the setting of targets for time per week. We have a dedicated PE coach and regular sessions with outreach workers from Chelsea football. The benefits are easily seen - every year there are more teams competing for the school and sports day is getting better and better. And yes, we have competitive races, with heats to select the best runners which get the glory moment of the sprint. But everyone takes part and there is a big enough mix of events that everyone has fun.

And yes, someone should remind Boris that not everyone has the "privilege" of sleeping at school, with masters who are desperate to keep adolescent boys too busy to make trouble!!