Tonight:
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ON the same day we hailed our Olympic heroes as they paraded through London, new figures from the Government on sport in schools made for depressing reading.
One in three children does not play any competitive sport at school, according to the Government's 2007-08 school sports survey. In London, the record is particularly dismal around 10 per cent of pupils do not manage to play sport for the Government's two-hours-a-week target.
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham is pledging a £30 million drive to encourage more children to play competitive games. The money is to be used to hire 225 "competition managers" to set up inter-school contests and leagues.
He accompanied his announcement with the claim: "School sport is in a stronger place than it has been in decades and it's great that competitive sport is on the rise. It is this playing-to-win ethos that I want to see grow further, both inside and outside of our schools, with even more opportunities for young people of all abilities to be properly coached, compete and be the best that they can be."
I wonder. Every day, I drive home over Hammersmith Bridge. Immediately on my right are the 45 lush acres of St Paul's Boys School. There are rugby and football pitches, cricket squares and nets, tennis courts and an all-weather running track.
A bit further on are the playing fields at Barn Elms in Barnes. There's a running track but it's in a state of disrepair and is covered with puddles when it rains. Some of the tennis courts are derelict. There are football and rugby pitches and on Saturday and Sunday mornings, they're also covered with children. Local residents have fought a long campaign to stop Richmond council turning the space over to a private health club.
Contrasts like this can be repeated all over London and make a mockery of Burnham's claims or the boast from Schools Secretary Ed Balls that "massive progress" is being made and a "firm foundation" has been laid for the 2012 Olympic legacy.
My own children attended a mixture of schools. At their state primary, "PE" consisted of virtually nothing certainly not sport as I know it and no comparison with the exploits we saw in Beijing.
"Tennis" consisted of the pupils hitting plastic balls to each other with plastic bats. They had no space for proper courts or nets.
When they played "football", they did so on a concrete playground with five-a-side sized goals. The teams were required to be mixed boys and girls and mixed in ability. Imagine Sir Alex Ferguson being told he had to have three girls in his side plus a boy who showed no inclination to run.
It wasn't the teachers' fault they were not qualified sports trainers and they had to cater for everyone with no room in which to do so. Likewise, "rugby" consisted of throwing an oval ball backwards and forwards.
There was little serious equipment to speak of and certainly not enough to go around if we wanted more we had to raise the money ourselves, via cake sales and quiz nights organised by the Parent Staff Association or by collecting thousands of vouchers from supermarkets or junk food companies.
When they had swimming lessons, they trooped off to the local council pool for all of half-an-hour's worth. That was in one year at school in the other years they didn't learn to swim at all.
But the school was very proud of its country dancing it devoted many hours to developing displays for the summer fair and other fundraisers.
At secondary age, my daughter went to a state grammar. I can't recall her once, ever, mentioning she'd done any sport. The place had tennis courts but the nets always appeared to be sagging and full of holes. More to the point, whenever I drove past, the courts were empty. There was one all-weather hockey pitch and a running track that was covered over when part of the school burnt down and they had to erect temporary classrooms. And that was it.
My two sons, on the other hand, went to independents and had a similar experience to the boys at St Paul's. They had facilities galore. They could row if they wanted; my daughter's school didn't row even though it was two minutes' walk from the Thames. Pupils had the choice of every game and sport although, oddly, country dancing did not feature on the list.
They were taught to play by professional coaches, some of whom had been at the very top of their craft. They were imbued with a sense of competitiveness, of pushing themselves that extra metre. If they played in school teams, they were expected to stay behind for after-hours coaching and at weekends, too.
At the boys' sports days, in comparison to the event at their state primary schools, those taking part actually won prizes. I attended a sports day at their primary and found it baffling it seemed to last for ever and the convoluted scoring system guaranteed, as far as I could ascertain, that everyone finished equal.
Against this background, the Government's ultimate aim of getting children to do five hours of sport a week, in and out of school, is laughable: and where will they do it?
Between 1989 and 1999, London lost more than 2,500 acres of playing fields. There are now about 1,500 sports pitches for the capital's 7.5 million inhabitants. In outer London, some boroughs have as many as 100 pitches but six inner-London boroughs each have fewer than 10.
Many of those schools fortunate enough to have swimming pools are losing them half could see them vanish. At the new Pimlico School, the pool will be replaced by a canteen.
Ministers declare their love for sport and its importance. They bask in the glory of Beijing (although what was striking about the tales of our medal winners was how their parents had been forced to devote time and money to helping them).
What are not required are "competition managers" and facile words from Burnham and Balls but serious amounts of cash to spend on equipment and facilities and teachers who are able to teach sport to a strong, competitive level. At the same time, councils have to be banned from engaging in any more sell-offs and closures and given hard cash to start rebuilding and reopening.
We have to end the current shameful apartheid where private schools have everything and those at state schools have next to nothing. Only then can we genuinely claim to offer "sport for all" and talk in terms of achieving a meaningful Olympic legacy.
Reader views (1)
Chris, you are spot on !
I would also insist that the current Ministers of Health, Sport and Education are all replaced on Monday, Headteachers are instructed to 'lead by example' and all the state school children are made to partake in competitive sport at school in the UK! Just like private schools and the rest of world's school kids.
At the end of the day it is 'survival of the fittest' and I'll give you one guess who the fittest will be ? not the indigenous UK state school kids - once again they've been neglected and avoided by divisive public servants/educationalists!
- Robbie, ruislip, 08/11/2008 19:55
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