DD is starting a petition at the school with her friends

[EmmaMackenzie42]

Hi, this is my first time posting but I've been on Mumsnet for a while, and I've found lots of things useful on this website :)

So this all started when my eldest daughter (14 years old) didn't get into the netball team (there are only 15 places in each year, including subs, out of the hundreds of girls in the school). I've realised that the boys in her school have plenty of sports teams (football, rugby, basketball, cricket, tennis, even table tennis etc.). The only other technical girls sport is X-country (that is unisex, but it only happens once a year).

She wanted to start a petition along some of her other friends to make more girls sports teams and it has got quite a few signatures so far from several girls and even a few boys. They are also holding an additional petition to have an end-of-year school prom following exam season; thst has garnered a similar number of signatures.

The school has claimed it will consider the prom (but no actions have been done so far), and they also said they wouldn't create more girls sports teams because "not enough girls would sign up/ want to play for the sports teams".

I am in full support of my DD and her friends, and I love her very much. I came on here hoping for online support to put pressure on the school to create more girls' sports teams (and the EOY prom of course! :) ).

Extract from the letter from the Lionesses to the candidates for the tory leadership after the Euros 2022:

Presently, only 67 per cent of all schools and 41 per cent of secondary schools offer sports equally to girls in PE lessons. Whilst only 46 per cent of schools provide girls with the same extra-curricular opportunities as boys.

The Lionesses squad asked that the Prime Minister, who ever that may be, help achieve change by making “it a priority to invest into girls’ football in schools, so that every girl has a choice.” The team wants girls to have more opportunities than they did. “We were often stopped from playing… so we made our own teams, we travelled across the country and, despite the odds, we just kept playing football,” they wrote.

“This generation of school girls deserve more,” the team concluded. “They deserve to play football at lunchtime, they deserve to play football in PE lessons and they deserve to believe they can one day play for England. We want their dreams to come true.”

Lioness Letter