Someone out there, please defend or explain the reasons for non-competitive sport at primary school

[Balls]

I thought I got it - you know give everynoe a chance to participate, but I've just come back from a shambles of a swimming gala where the not so able swimmers were humiliated in public by desperately trying to participate from the back and the able swimmers were not allowed to compete in their strongest strokes. What if the able swimmers fail at everything but swimming and this is their chance to shine in something? I'm prepared to be persuaded but right now I think it is PC gone bonkers.

we loved it at our school

ran, skipped and hopped for the pride of your 'house'

fab! all aertex shirts and cullottes

what balls?

Hey, I'm crap at sport and equally intimiditated by those Trinians types, but there must be a middle way surely? Surely it doesn't have to be - competivie sports this way for Millfield verus nambypambies this way.. I find that insulting.

JT, did you go to Malory Towers??

"Yay" for joolstwo who mentioned aertex and cullottes!!!

Love it!

Sorry MadEye (fingers not good at hopping obviously!)

everyone got a well done sticker, white teams got a 1st palce sticker, and other teams got 2nd and 3rd stickers.

too sorry not two

oh and thwe older kids helped the younger ones.

Erm, please could you present yourself for remedial spelling JT: CULOTTES.

STO Psaying you are crap at sport! WTF does that mean? on whose terms? all sports are not the same!
actually I really do think sport is mainly pointless and I think that the limited school time could be better spent. if you want fitness, team building etc then there are a million better ways to foster that than hockey.
imo

yes Miss as long as I don't get a house debit.

Malory Towers? ha! ha!

I loved my culottes, blue they were.

Well I loved hockey and was not put off by never getting into the team - in fact loved it so much that we used to play it during lunchtimes. By crap I mean that I never won anything but I played all sorts of sport well into adulthood and have been known to run occasionally!

JT - mine were a vile bottle green!

Sorry I lie - we had grey culottes with "merids" underneath (vile bottle green giant baggy knickers underneath).

Hi Balls - yes you are right - but actually to get into the school teams they pretty well have to do most of their sports stuff independently.

The football team is a local one - costs around 1.50 a week. They both go to a swimming club as well as the school swimming team - their club does club nights and distance training with them - can't remember how much it costs but not much. Tennis is something they do at the local tennis club - in the red-orange-green scheme that is run nationally - again really not much money. The only thing that happens entirely at school is the netball and even then the school was hinting that it was about time she did some work out of school on it.

Quatty - this actually reinforces my view. Today, there were the kids who evidently have lots of guts and some had innate talent, but had had no decent coaching and they were thrown in with kids like mine who had had bags of private tuition. NOT FAIR on either set. Made the "poor but talented" group feel crap and made the coached and talented group feel like they were also crap - so it was a lose lose situation and I was crosser for the kids who were put out of their depth (no pun intended) as obviously those who can afford it and want it will seek competitive opps elsewere.

Sorry guys, got to go to bed, but would love to resume tomorrow at some point. Thanks for the feedback. Feel I've got some rant out of my spleen!!

Agree with 'harpsichord'.

The only fair to all way of doing 'sports day' would be by who can beat their personal best times and of course that would be totally impractical.Exercise needs to be encouraged but not by the dominance of traditional team sports and athletics.Bodies need a mixture of cardio vascular exercise and stretching to take care of muscles.
What about more aerobics or jazz dance,yoga,kick boxing? Not everything is about running fast or ball control skills.

I agree that at secondary level competitive sport should be opt in, but not many people are up to kick boxing and few teenage boys are going to go for jazz. I think sports day shoudl be what it is - a day for competitive sport - it is what happens the rest of the year that matters.

Secondary level should be "opt-in" absolutely.

There should be much more fitness-centred PE at secondary school too. I dont remember much at all at secondary (although I was perfectly happy with my competitive sports ie netball, athletics, swimming etc )

I think competitive sport is a good thing, as long as it isnt the only type of PE.

Sport was something I was good at before any other subject (I was a late developer re English and Maths, but leapt from bottom to top within a term in juniors).

I would hate to see competitive sport disappear under a cloud of PC-ness, even though it looks as though DD is not going to be a particularly 'sporty' child.

Plus at primary - our sports day, although individual races were run, we were all in teams - red, blue, yellow, green.

Teams were split fairly through the year groups and ability.

Each team cheered on their team member in a race, whatever their ability.

It was a fantastic exercise in teamwork, more than anything else.

I should mention I am going back 20 years !!!!

I think those of you who emerged from school feeling that PE/games/sport whatever was torture had a rough deal. It's a very sad indictment of your schools, imo. Games at my school were fun, inclusive and competitive - we had all sorts of teams and played matches against other schools all the time. Each pupil's strong point was found - whether it was tennis, swimming or netball, whatever, and encouraged.

Having said that, we had 'house' competitions in which all sorts of things counted - not just sport, but academic and artistic things too, like best essay, or book review, or piece of sculpture. So everyone could help their house to win.

ours is all team-based relay type races - ie the team stands in line, each member has to do something (throw a bean bag at a target; run through hoops; skip to a cone and back; they go to the back of the line and the next one does it, when all the team has done it they sit down. first team to all sit down wins. the teams are roughly "equal" - ie a mix of years. I think it's an excellent compromise - no-one feels left out, they all cheer each other on, they all want to win so it does have an element of competition. In fact I'm almost evangelical about it and I think all infant schools should do this!