Olympic Legacy, curriculum,

@Sussex Runner - do you find that kids at your childrens school are more likely to want to do sport because the facilities are there or is it more like Wilkie's experience of "only doing it because they have to".

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This a list of the clubs that children can go to in my local town only thing missing is rowing. So its not lack of clubs and facilities that hold kids back it more the attitude of parents and school. I guess in most towns and cities these clubs will exsit it just that most people don't know about them. So a greater awareness would be a good starting point

Not certain if the stats for this games have come out yet but at Beijing 50% of the GB medal winners went to private schools.  I bet PE and games is compulsory at them, including cross country, I guess most have better qualified teachers and also better equipment.  I also bet most of their parents want them to be good at  everything, academically and sporting.

Not sure what the answer is but it is a mixed picture and so tough to really make the legacy promise a reality

I`m Head of P.E. in a Special School (for ESBD) but I was a previously Head of P.E. in mainstream and I`ve worked overseas.

In short, the Government, to this point have shown that they don`t give a toss about state schools. All the academy stuff is just a way of dissolving themselves of any responsibility. Straight away they scrapped the School Sports Partnerships and gave the green light for sales of playing fields. Virtually all of them are public school educated with no clue about the education of the other 93%. Now they`re bandwaggoning the current wave of Olympic euphoria. They love trotting out the line about there being no competitive sport in state schools (which is tosh) but they have also scrapped the mandatory 2 hours P.E. that used to be in place. P.E. gets marginalised because of the pressure on core subjects to meet increasingly ridiculous targets.

And JF - NO! Private schools often have LESS well qualified staff because you don`t have to have QTS to teach there but Michael Gove is now wanting academies to be able to do this so they can recruit `experts`; completly offensive and ignorant. The worst P.E. lessons I saw were at Bradford Grammar School (where the Brownlees went) but then parents there will pay for their boys to go off on rugby tours to New Zealand. The Head of P.E. was not even a teacher.

I could go on and on . ..  but they are clueless and don`t care.

The Egyptian Toe wrote (see)

I`m Head of P.E. in a Special School (for ESBD) but I was a previously Head of P.E. in mainstream and I`ve worked overseas.

In short, the Government, to this point have shown that they don`t give a toss about state schools. All the academy stuff is just a way of dissolving themselves of any responsibility. Straight away they scrapped the School Sports Partnerships and gave the green light for sales of playing fields. Virtually all of them are public school educated with no clue about the education of the other 93%. Now they`re bandwaggoning the current wave of Olympic euphoria. They love trotting out the line about there being no competitive sport in state schools (which is tosh) but they have also scrapped the mandatory 2 hours P.E. that used to be in place. P.E. gets marginalised because of the pressure on core subjects to meet increasingly ridiculous targets.

And JF - NO! Private schools often have LESS well qualified staff because you don`t have to have QTS to teach there but Michael Gove is now wanting academies to be able to do this so they can recruit `experts`; completly offensive and ignorant. The worst P.E. lessons I saw were at Bradford Grammar School (where the Brownlees went) but then parents there will pay for their boys to go off on rugby tours to New Zealand. The Head of P.E. was not even a teacher.

I could go on and on . ..  but they are clueless and don`t care.

 

I agree totally.

I imagine if you are boarding extra curricular sport is part of the culture and you have the time to do it on site and with nice facilities - very different from the average state school!

Stephen E Forde wrote (see)

Well I was a child in the 80's my school looked like a cross between Grange Hill ( look it up) and a 70's council estate. we even had a part we called the tower block but we did all the track and field sports bar I think pole vault. We had a 25 metre pool a gym with a full sized basket ball court with vanished wooden flooring and all the gear, valting horse, rings.An all weather pitch, tennis courts a sports hall you could fit all 1600 kids in and still have room round the edges! The actual sports fields where enormous.Sports days where like something out of a boys own book from the 1930's  I have no idea how this was possible. None what so ever. This was a comperhensive  buildt in the 70's not private, not grammar.

Where did the money come from and where has it all gone?

Really where has all the money gone? We are a much richer nation now and we seem to be squandering that wealth.

My brother still lives where we grew up and he says that as far as he can see all the old grounds are still there. So hopefully some one is still trying to break my long jump record.

Kidding kidding!

 

 

OK, apart from the swimming pool, ditto my experience of comprehensive secondary, though we could use the local 25m pool in town and the golf course as well.

So what, I hated PE, I hated the PE teachers who modeled themselves on Hitler and thought that ridiculing less able kids was fair game, I see it now in trainee PE teachers. If there had been compulsory PE every day I would have spent far more time out of school as in.

It was a long time ago but the school I went to was proud of it's sporting achievements.  Kids opted for my school because of it's bias toward PE. The PE teachers actually played the sports they taught - hockey, football, rugby, tennis etc. It wasn't just a job to them.

I was utter crap at sports as a school kid- short, dumpy, short sighted, with specs that fell off everytime I moved, and left handed- so always sent to stand at the far end of the line for tennis, no proper kit for other sports. I never bunked off, but I was always picked last, or not at all.

No effort was made to try to encourage the likes of me. THe sports I enjoyed outside school were shooting, canoeing, ski-ing, and judo- OK, so it's not easy to fit these into the curriculum, but I can't help feeling that for those of us who are rubbish at bat-and -ball sports, and who are slow to physically mature as teenagers, school sports are just an excuse for weekly misery and humilition.

It turns out that I was perhaps not such a no-hoper, as I have 2 commonwealth medals for shooting, no thanks to the school system.

I only got interested in running 17 years after leaving school, as  fitness training was a by- product of my shooting training.

We really need to find a way to motivate kids like me , who are just useless at the traditional school sports. In other countries they talent-spot at an early age, and not just for the obvious things like football. Pity we don't have more of that here, although I suppose it encourages young hopefulls to get pushed in a "hot-housing" environment, and a lot of those kids give up as soon as the parental pressure is off.

Tricia - you would be very surprised at the breadth of provision that many state schools now offer. However, that may well revert to a situation similar to what you experienced decades ago as PM has a very narrow knowledge of what sport ought to offer to our young people.