Independent Schools Question for Parents

[teapot234]

I am a student in the lower 6th of an independent school in East Sussex. I’m doing primary research into the importance of sport in school and how it impacts the decision makers when choosing a school.

I would be interested to know, from a parenting point of view, how important a school’s sports programs (variety & quantity), sports academies and facilities are in your decision making process as a parent when choosing a school for your child?

I would also be very interested to know what concerns you may have as a parent (if any) about your child and sport within schools?

Thank you

Hi! We chose independent over state for our DS as he is very sporty. DD is very academic so we’ve opted to try for a more academic school (still independent) for her even though we know the sport is not to the same level. If she was as sports mad as her older brother but still as academically able then I’m not sure which option we would have gone for. Sport is still ok at the schools we’ve just sat for but they don’t offer a specialised sports pathway like DS’s school. But then DS’s school isn’t as academic as the one DD has sat for. It’s still selective but not super selective. So maybe I’m lucky that I didn’t need to find a school that was super strong in both areas. I think if I had a super bright, super sporty child then the academics would need to trump the sporting reputation but I’d look to find somewhere that still offered a good range of sporting opportunities.

As a parent doing the rounds, sporting facilities are certainly one of the things that make a school appear impressive and if your child is a good ‘all rounder’ then it can definitely sway you one way or the other.

I think it's a case of the importance you assign to it depends upon how sporty your child is. Assuming you are thinking of secondary schools, by year 5/6 you know if your child will take advantage of super sports facilities or not (same with music/drama etc).

DS is quite sporty so we were keen to see sports facilities and they swayed him that his current school would be a good school to go to. However as parents, our decision about the schools we had visited was primarily focused on academic suitability.

I don't have any worries about DS and sport in school, apart from the worry of rugby injures. He does plenty with variety, thoroughly enjoys it and has chosen PE GCSE.

The factors parents consider when choosing an independent school aren't that different from parents choosing a state school. They include sports provision, but also SEN provision, size of the school, academic results, music art and drama provision...

Some parents will choose a school that does or does not offer rugby, as this is a sport that some boys loathe and others take very seriously. It will depend on what the parents value and what their child's interests are. It is also worth remembering that some schools achieve a lot of modest facilities, so while some parents are swayed by shiny new facilities, others are not. The fact I have said that at all, probably reveals that I am not swayed by fancy facilities and sport is not a significant factor in our decision making process. For us, music and drama are far more important, along with good organisation and a strong emphasis on pastoral care.

Sport was a very important factor in our decision to send DC to an Independent school.

In YR it's hard to know how sporty your children might be but for us it was about them having the opportunity. DC now have as much sport on the timetable as maths or english and in my opinion it's important for their health and mental wellbeing to take part in regular sport. Looking around the school there are very few children that are obviously overweight. As it turns out DC are pretty sporty and play for the 'A' teams but certainly not future olympians.

Games is taught by specialist teachers (so they learn good technique and the rules!) and as well as the traditional schools sports they do basketball, lacrosse and badminton. All of the children get the opportunity to play for a school team learning the discipline and etiquette that comes from this and they love going off to away matches and having match tea at other schools.

I compare our experience to that of the DC of friends at local state schools and some are lucky to get an hour of PE a week - mostly taught by the class teacher. There are no football/rugby/hockey/netball teams and no matches. By the time they go to high school sport is off the agenda for many.

I realise that different people have different priorities and not all state or independent schools are the same but given our options locally we believe that we made the right decision.

Sport is a very significant factor for us in choosing a school - it won’t trump everything else (unless our child turns out to have a particular talent) but it is important to us the school has high quality sport provision.

In choosing a private school poor sporting provision would make us think twice. To be clear it is not necessarily about sporting facilities per se but about having a culture of sport (regardless of your skill level) and excellent sports tuition. My school was excellent in many ways and also had done very nice facilities but has never really excelled at sport and that puts me off in considering schools.

Sports wasn’t a factor for us at all when choosing Private education.
Provision is quite good at our daughters school but is very very netball heavy for the girls. If you aren’t in the netball team you aren’t seen as sporty (despite our daughter winning most races at sports day) and girls are discouraged from joining the other sports teams such as football in case it clashes with netball matches or practise. The PE teacher admits that this is the case as in netball “we know we can bring home the trophies”
That’s my main issue/concern with PE at the school but also the boy/girl segregation. For non contact sports such as Badminton and dance the classes could be mixed in my opinion

Sports does play a part in my decision. However I am looking at the bigger picture here. Personally I think that it’s important to facilitate a culture of sport. I also try and find out about provision in general. This is why I ask questions about after school clubs and activities as well it’s important to me.

Hi Teapot

we are currently looking at independent schools in East Sussex for our daughter. I wonder if your school is on our list?

Sport is a very important part of the decision for us. Our daughter is only average at sport and so rarely gets picked for the teams that go off and play other schools. She would love to be picked more, so I'll be looking for schools that provide opportunities for those who are not naturally gifted.

I think staying fit in adolescence, and developing good fitness habits, is hugely important. So, I want a school that puts lots of Sport/PE in the timetable. However, I think, particularly for girls, attitudes to exercise can change dramatically at this stage of life. Certainly in my teenage years, I really went off competitive team sports like hockey and netball. Unfortunately, that was all that was on offer at my school, and as a result, I dreaded PE and was put off exercise for a long time. I don't want this to happen to my daughter. It's important to me that she's at a school where there are a lot of exercise options - something for everyone, and while participating in something is compulsory, she will not be forced to endure sports that she hates.

Hugely important, especially in the younger years; team sports for developing collegiate behaviours and all the other social development benefits, and having a culture where children expect to be out 3 or 4 times a week doing exercise. It is one of the key differences between a state timetable and an independent timetable.
My DC have different levels of sporting interest/non-interest, but their sporting experiences are now in their DNA; even the least sporting one knows that with effort and resilience and support from others, they can develop a level of competence in pretty much anything they set their minds to (and I don’t mean just within sport). They also know that if you don’t sometimes lose at stuff then you’re not trying hard enough - a huge lesson in setting ones attitudes towards life in general. That’s the value of a strong sporting curriculum.

Sport just didn’t figure on my radar at all . It was all about academia . That said one of the reasons my kid chose her school was because she liked the swimming pool - apart from year 7/8 not sure she’s ever ventured in it though .

Sports provision didn't influence us very much in choosing a school for our DD: we didn't realise at the time how much she would benefit from it (By luck, her school does have great sports)

However, the school's attitude to sports was very important. We were put off by these attitudes:

1. As hoppinggreen said, some school focus and value only the sport in which they excel. This gives the message to children that they're not good enough, and should only focus their efforts on the few things they can achieve.

1. Other schools only give matches to the top team, and one actually said that their students choose not to pursue a sport if they aren't good at it. This encourages an attitude that it's natural ability that matters most, and it's not worth doing something that you aren't naturally good at. The opposite of resilience and grit.

When we were looking at schools he acted on the assumption that all good schools offered at least rugby, tennis and cricket and had the facilities to practice them properly and ensured that children undertook physical activity daily. Beyond that we didn’t really care.

My dd is a day pupil at a boarding prep and I am beginning to worry that it it just too much sport. 2 periods of games per day, plus extra PE, swimming, ballet, judo, fencing, horse riding and matches, including Saturdays. I like it that my dd, who is not particularly sporty, gets the exercise, but it eats into her time for other stuff, especially academics and music. We are starting to look for a more balanced school, which would probably mean moving away from boarding schools towards day only schools. I would prefer 3 times a week sports, and clubs like debating, drama, science, board games etc on the other 2 days, and earlier home time (she gets to leave school between 6 and 8pm, mainly because of all the sports, I would prefer 5pm, and that to already include 30min supervised prep). I like that sport at her school is very inclusive, though, and that the coaching is so superb that even an unsporty child like my dd is reasonable fit and looks like she knows what she is doing with a hockey stick.

Interesting range of responses! I hated sport at school and didn't take any notice of sports facilities etc when choosing schools for my kids - I deliberately steered away from schools where it seemed to be very prominent. Of course they should all do some exercise and there is a value in team activities, but I don't think school team sports are the only way to achieve these things.

DD goes to an independent school. Sport did not cross my mind when choosing a school. She hates sports and will be delighted when she can finally give them up. She does like yoga, dance and running so isn't physically inactive but the emphasis on ball sports in any school doesn't suit her (it would have been no better in any other school).

We chose a private secondary for ds1 because of his passion for sport. It transformed our lives as, when he was in the state system, I spent every evening taking him to training or games. Once he was at his new school he flourished in the sporting environment and ds2 and I got our evenings/lives back.

Ds1 is very, very academic but it was 100% the sporting programmes (along with the scholarships which made it possible) which led us to look at independent schools and to choose the specific one which we did.

DD did A level PE so it was important that the choice of sports she enjoyed was available. DS isn't as sporty, but he's still extremely active. The one big reason we chose his school was the amount of activities on offer, not just sport, because he gets bored easily.

Yes sport was a factor in choosing a school, but not the most important factor.

Good question OP. Originally our focus was entirely on academic matters and music, and a disaster of a state village primary caused us to go independent. What we then ran into was a shocking and rather mindless obsession with herd games, particularly rugby, in a prep that thought there was something wrong with you if you did not want your son to be inducted into their culture of herd violence. I think there is still a culture of institutional child abuse in the private sector on this front. My son was smart enough to disengage himself from this crap, and complaints at parents' evening that his idea of sport was to loiter by the goalposts chatting to a similarly disengaged boy were generally met by expressions of pleasure from me that he had the brains not to put himself at the risk of head and spinal injuries in a scrum. Anyway, this ghastly experience strongly shaped our applications for senior schools, and we went for schools that combined strong academic focus, no holistic la-la, strong music, and above all, a wide free choice of individual and team sports. That last point is the one I want the OP to take from this post. Schools should assess kids for their abilities and interests and offer tailored opportunities, not shovel them into something they hate, just to support an often anachronistic culture. DS having got into one such school, he is now fully engaged in two sports he really loves, representing his school at top level in one and in house competitions in another. So a good outcome in the end. A sports policy should address above all the needs of the individual child and offer what suits those needs, and that must always take priority over the school's prevailing obsessions. In our case having found some suitable sports, my son is now learning all the lessons of resilience and team-work he should learn.

We chose an independent school for our children. Eldest in year one, youngest in nursery. Chose the school based on an all round approach. My eldest loves the outdoors and she loved the school at the open day when she was 3. They offer tennis, swimming, pe, games, forest school etc as part of core classes and football hockey cooking sewing mindfulness colouring, film clubs horse riding etc as free after school activities. I couldn't see a main stream sport that was missed. This may change as she gets older.

My only concern with it now she's in year 1 is that she does so many activities in a normal school day I don't know how they fit in any reading or writing. She doesn't need any after school activities as everything else is covered . I've heard she actually spends less time reading and writing at an independent school than she would at state school but it's part of an all round education and evens out over time. It's alot of carrot in the early years with loads of fun activities to help the children love school before the harder work really starts.

Ideally I'd love my kids to get to try as much as possible in sports, academic, arts etc and find a real passion and also of course have very fond memories of their school years and I think sport is key to that, it certainly was the main activity I loved at school.

No, we did not choose a school based on sport. Our DDs had other interests.

However the school we did choose had a "sport for all" mantra which we though sounded reasonable. Some sport is fine. However, it turned out that "sport for all" really meant winning at all costs. DD1 joined the badminton club. It was held at the same time as hockey team practice for the keen sporty girls (they win hockey competitions at all ages). They changed the time of badminton so the keen girls could join it. The average ones then never played another match, and were essentially ousted, because the school could not bear that they lost (mostly). DD, and we, thought badminton club was about her fitness and finding a sport she enjoyed, and the less sporty types keeping fit. It was not. When we complained the sports teachers just stared at us. They clearly do not "get" non sporty people at all! So sport became impossible for the less sporty and she did nothing in 6th form at all, along with quite a few others.

However, many things about the school did suit so we did not throw the baby out with the bath water. Schools that take sport ultra seriously can be a pain though if other pupils are completely sidelined.

Totally uninterested in the Sports offered.

I'd much rather the emphasis be on keeping fit for life than team games, coach trips and cricket teas. And tons of expensive kit!

We are also currently looking at schools in East Sussex.

Sport is hugely important to us in choosing. DS1 is sporty, but likes lots of different things, but DS2 is sport mad (one in particular)
Sport isn't the most important factor, but it's pretty high up and I don't think DC would be happy in a school without good provision

Sport was only a secondary consideration for us; all I have ever hoped for was that my children would be engaged with sports. Having said that, I am very glad my youngest has just started at a senior school that has broad provision, an expectation of regular sports activity, but minimal requirements for team sports - this means he is able to choose activities that he is happy doing and much more likely to remain active! My eldest has got into rowing somewhat to my bemusement; but I am glad she has been able to find something that she enjoys and will hopefully be able to continue to at least some extent in future.

To me it was only important to ensure sport did not dominate the school’s culture in a way that alienated those perceived to be ‘non sporty’. To ensure that being an ‘A team’ player was not more valued than being good at anything else. It seems to me that this is true in some boys schools.
For my son I picked a school where there was no rugby because that means there will be less of that whole alpha male macho thing. He likes sport but not conventional ones played at public school.
For my daughters it was of no consequence either way. One competes in a sport not offered at schools and one just goes for the odd run when she feels like it.
I sometimes think a lot of the fees are spent on sports facilities which are only really enjoyed by a minority of the pupils but is a demonstration of the schools success. When the schools build new sports centres I wish they’d just cut the damn fees instead!!!!