What's happened to competitive Sports days?

[Maybee]

Just been to a really boring sports day at my son's school on Fri for the 3rd year in a row. A non event. All teams of mixed agegroups doing lots of activities around the pitch. no winners- no losers they get their points on Monday! I can't help thinking its v boring. I mean when I was a kid some people really excelled at Sports day and weren't necessarily that good at anything else. Wonder why this is no longer celebrated especially when kids often come home with daft little 'I ate my dinner today' 'I was polite' stickers. It seems as if everything else gets a reward these days.
The kids seemed to enjoy it ok but none of us had a clue where our kids even where half the time!

I will love competitive sports days when:

• Reading is done in public
• Those who read the best get house points for their team.
• Those who are slow readers of course don't get house points, no matter how hard they try, meaning that their fellow house members are pissed off with them
• Those who are the worst readers are excluded from most reading events
• It is acceptable for good readers to mock those who are not so good, calling them 'slowcoach' etc.
• There is no additional help for those who are slow at reading, they are just left at the back of the group, meaning that their only defence is to decide that reading is a waste of time, and to avoid it where-ever possible.

Can you tell that I was rubbish at sports at school?

I think the key point in your post is 'the kids seemed to enjoy it ok' - surely the point of school is to teach children useful things, ie in this case to enjoy and be able to do exercise in order to keep healthy, not to give gold stars to some, and put the rest off for life.

Ours is competitive but has games going on as well. But I think there is too much emphasis on being good at sports as a child, I am lucky that DS is very sporty and will probably win a few races at his sports day next week, he did in the practice, and he enjoys it. Boys can lose interest in learning and education in favour of sports and this does nothing to help if schools don't congratulate on other more academic subjects as well.

'Sports day' at ds's first school consisted of him walking across a balance beam, walking with a plastic egg etc. No competitive sports whatsoever. Many state schools have abolished the competitve side, stupid if you ask me.

They killed them so no one gets upset. So all those children who are good at sports but not that much else don't even get a chance to shine there.

Once when I was a student teacher I was a line judge on Sports Day. I got loads of abuse from parents (and a little from a teacher!!!) when I didn't say their little darlings won.

I like the way my dds school do it. During PE lessons they are put into ability groups so they are competing against dc of a similar ability so they do have a chance of winning, it's still competitive but it's not unfair/humiliating.

It's interesting how all the tall dc end up in the same group - wonder when it will change and they get to a level of learning how to sprint IYSWIM

Glad it's not just my dd's school. I went to ehr first sports day and was a bit that it seemed to be balancing for 1 minute, a game of tunnelball, and, err, that's about it. Kids aren't stupid. It's as bad as calling the top reading group 'apple' and the bottom group 'banana', the children know who the less able ones are. And do they care? Not a jot. I can't run for toffee, never could, but comign last in the egg and spoon race has not done me lasting damage. I am goign to talk to the head as tbh a lot of parents were speakign about it afterwards, having to take time off work to pretty much sit around in the baking sun for an hour watching, well, we weren't sure what. There was no obvious point, no 'winner', nothing really to cheer on. Very sad. It's not even called sports day at our school, ffs, it's the 'sports event'

Shaz did it occur to you thattheir dc might not have been that brilliant at other stuff and this could be a confidence boosting moment for them?

I think children need to compete against each other so that they can learn how to handle winning and losing.

Reading, by nature is not competitive. It is a personal activity and a life skill required by all. However, sport is competitive, think football/olympics.

Children cannot succeed at everything in life and I think they need to learn that early on. I hated maths at school, had nightmares about it, but still had to do it.

If they weren't the winner though...

So? they might have been good at something else. Life's like that.

It is (very) competitive at our school!

However, its all done in teams so individuals are not singled out as being very good or very poor. The races are quite "Its a Knockout" in style too.

The teams are really well done actually, with each group having equal numbers of children from each year. The year 6 pupils help the little ones and run along side them so they're not on their own and don't get flustered.

As for the parents race....well, is it the norm for parents to take it so seriously or is it just the parents here?

absolutely tragic. They have deprived these kids of a sense of achievement and the pride of being recognised by their peers as champions in certain activities. It is as if the teachers have been taken over by some sort of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and have removed the joy of competition from the unfortunate kids in their charge. And we are holding the next Olympics, what a betrayal of Olympic ideals.

Well I for one am really glad that sports day was non competitive. DD#1 has motor skills issues and will never be that good, but she really enjoyed taking part this year despite coming last in everything. I am proud of her for doing it and being pleased with herself. Everyone will get a certificate at school next week for taking part. If the atmosphere is not all that then it is the parents who need to take a look at themselves to be honest - you cheer them all on no matter what and you find you can enjoy it because they are, not because of who wins.

Primary schools need PE teachers. They don't have them do they?

Competitive sports day alive and well at DS's primary school. I don't mind, but my DS is not good at sports and it bothers him that he never wins, although he does try.

It is a bit that we have to keep quiet about his excellent reading, maths, etc as there's no public celebration of the children who excel academically, but they can all wave their place cards around at sports day.

If you're going to have competition, it seems only fair to have it in a range of activity types, so all the children who are good at something get their moment in the sun, not just the sporty ones.

The problem I have is that if you are bad at reading then you are encouraged to improve. If you are bad at sports, it is seen as not a problem, you just don't do sport. I think that it is a bad thing if some children get put off sport for life, because physical activity is important.

And no, sport is not intrinsically competitive. Even ignoring people hiking, running for pleasure etc, as an adult there is an awful lot of sport that is about achieving your personal best or completing a course within a set time - for example in cycling - although of course there is plenty of racing too.

I also agree with Ashcloud - at primary level children who are good at maths or reading are expected to keep quiet about it - they're certainly not celebrated.

I agreee with your first bit. That's why I think there should be specialised PE teachers at primary level.

That way you can really get organised : in a "compete against yourself" way -- personal bests and so on.

It is simply seen as too unimportant which I think is wrong and dull.

My eldest DC's school has a proper competitive sports afternoon.

The morning is a round robin non-competitve affair.

Then for the afternoon only the children who have won through the heats (done in class the week before) compete.

I like it, it is very competitive with the rest of the children cheering for their teams. Scores combine from the morning to the afternoon scores to find a winning team.

Perhaps I only like it though because my DC seems to be in it every year!

But Ashcloud, you have to keep quiet about his excellent reading ability when you are in the playground or with other mums as it will be seen as boasting but when your child is at school, the other children will be well aware that he's better than them at reading! My DS1 who's 5 knows perfectly well which children are doing better or worse than him at the reading stages and key words.

And how can you say there's no public celebration of children who excel academically when ultimately exam results are published in the paper? I went to a very academic school and children were routinely mocked for being "thick" (not by me, I hasten to add)

FWIW, my DS1's primary school did a team event Sports Day based around the World Cup and it was excellent - managing to be competitive but inclusive at the same time.

I sort of agree with the OP - Sports Days are a chance for sporty children to shine and do well but then again, no-one wants to see ritualistic humiliation of children who are rubbish at sport and come last in everything. Surely, there must be a middle ground?

To be fair, dd's school does have a specific PE teacher, who is I think very good. They do loads of stuff about ball skills etc - but none of that is reflected in their sports day, which is basically about who can run fastest.

What I specifically object to is the fact that (a) because slower children disadvantage the team they are therefore disadvantaging their classmates (whereas slower learners in other areas are just as likely to receive housepoints for trying hard), and that (b) it is generally seen as acceptable to mock other children for being slow.

backtotalkaboutthis so it's ok to abuse a line judge if your child was close but not close enough? Either I'm missing your point or you missed mine.

I totally agree with Takver!

These days no-one abandons the slow-learning child. But there is absolutely no input if you are uncoordinated/generally useless at PE.

Now I feel quite cross that I have been inactive my whole life because I was so bad at sport at school. It's not so different from someone going through life illiterate because they didn't perform so well in the 3Rs early on.

Fortunately Gramercy I was lucky enough that my dad encouraged me to do loads of sport out of school (mainly non competitive swimming) - but otherwise I would have been exactly the same.

As it worked out, in secondary school I desperately avoided PE lessons where we would have been playing games, and then spent my lunchtimes playing football in the park. But then in my own time, no-one made me take my glasses off 'for safety' so I couldn't actually see the ball . . .

I remember when my primary school stopped making sports day competitive and we had to do stupid things like run with flippers, egg and spoon races etc. Previously we had done proper athletics.

I was never the fastest or greatest at sport (although was usually second/third) but I loved to have a proper go at running. When they stopped it I was gutted.

I think there is a sport for everyone, be it the individual or team events. It's a shame that such things are being phased out for fear of having kids exposed to losing.

I'm not sure that sports days need to involve every kid - in fact, I don't think they did at my secondary school?