Olympic Legacy, curriculum,

As a fond follower of all sports I am starting to believe that if structured right the venues and spirit coming from this years Olympics could actually boost British sport remarkably, mainly through more and more children/people wanting to take up the sports. In my opinion of sport to be taken seriously enough in this country in regards to others the curriculum should be looked at. I am quite young myself and in fact used to have just two physical education lessons of 1 hour a week! I think this needs to be daily to be honest. Also although I love and play football I believe the mainstream sports should not be focused on so much because there are so many opportunities to do these outside of school now more than ever. 

So would like to know your views on this.

Thanks

Comments

  • popsiderpopsider ✭✭✭

    When I was a kid most of our exercise didn't come from PE.    We played football or other games at break and dinner - most schools now have scrapped the afternoon break and the dinner hour is much shorter than it was - that takes out a huge amount of play time from kids lives.    Add in that far fewer kids walk or cycle to school and the local parks seem to have far fewer  kids playing football on an evening on them and an extra hour of PE in the curriculum looks like an irrelevance.   

  • 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!

     

     

  • Good point there popsider, my school that I attended for example has fields, tennis courts astroturf facilities and you are only allowed to have your break in the "playground" which is all tarmac. Plus you get a 45 minute break including eating to have that freedom

  • I think keeping kids fit and healthy is one thing and giving kids opportunity to excel at sports is another. Sure I used to play football at every opportunity, biked to school etc but I never saw a proper high jump mat or had a go at pole vault and there was little coaching going on. Football coaching consisted of endless dribbling round cones and no one ever taught you how to run. If anything cross country was designed to put you off for life.
  • Its a sad sad reality stephen I spoke to my old PE teacher who I keep in contact with and even though he is head of pe the school will rarely listen to his ideas of improving sport within the school and what facilities could be placed in massive fields that we have available being squandered!

  • Sussex Runner you hit the nail on the head right there! My school tended to have a massive sports day with all the athletic events and only then did that equipment really come out! In fact I only saw the high jump equipment once a year and the sand pit for triple and long jump was always bypassed!

  • Mewes they really are preparing you for the world of work. Tarmac so you get use to some horrendous commute by car, and only 45 minutes to call your own.

    I work and know some people in their early 30's and younger who seem quite content to have barely 30 minutes for lunch, and always eat at their desks!

    What exactly are they doing to kids?

  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭
    At my school we had a huge field which used to be used for everything for PE.track and field, rounders, cross country. Other schools used to come over and use it on a regular basis. I Was told 2 years ago that due to the price of land - they sold it off to a housing developer to pay for building maintenance and now they have nothing. There's barely a 100m track that they could use.



    This really saddened me. The priority is just not put on sport in the curriculum.
  • In a country with rising obesity levels especially in children you would think its a no brainer! I recently had placement from university and did some work in my old school and some children will even just sit PE out and not do it!? When I was at school which was not long ago at all everyone in my class wanted to do PE and it was something to look forward to! Even if they had forgot their kit they would raid the school football team or rugby team for some kit. Converting grounds into housing sickens me, some persons gain in funds is another generations lost in life.

  • Christ this is sad. So where is this sporting legacy meant to come from if you have thousands of the young who have never even held a discus or a javelin?

    I remember there was one kid who was not the best behaved or academic but he was brilliant at discus and when we did it in sports lessons you could see this was his moment to shine. Dont even talk to me about the kid who could do all the swimming strokes even butterfly. I was spitting with jealously. I was nifty at the back stroke thoughimage

    Oh all these misty memoriesimage

  • Ha dont relive them i say! An exactly another problem is the specialities of the staff these days, for example mys chool employed a pe teacher with a rugby background and instantly my school started doing more on rugby and participation became huge! Then he left for pastures new and guess what happened? No rugby team anymore. It saddened me also that when I went back the children said to me that apart from a few pe staff, no one coaches certain year groups, so one day I went to the astro after hours and coached a set of year 8s, the next day it was as though I was an idol to the kids. Thats all it takes sometimes, but even that effort seems to much for some.

  • Dont you worry Mewes there is always somewhere a little kid going along with her mum to an aerobics class seeing the big kids boxing and thinking "oh thats interesting"

  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭
    To be honest. Can understand why the school did it - they needed teaching rooms that didn't leak and had heating in winter and the field was a quick win and solved the issue. I had friends like Stephen - not so interested academically but when you put them in a field they could out sprint/throw anything that was given to them.



    They would be lost in my school today. That's what saddens me.



    I think the Olympics will generate a lot of positive interest in sport (look at the number of threads on the beginner thread) but if youngsters and beginners are stonewalled by not having cheap access to the facilities they need and the encouragement from the wider society it'll fade very quickly. Maybe I'm being a complete cynic here?
  • Not at all Emmy! If you want to do something but cannot then it defeats the object and may even make that person dislike te sport.
  • Couldn't agree with you more there
  • My initial caveat is that I AGREE totally with all of the above!

    But none of this will happen because PE is not considered important. English, Maths and the rest of the E Bacc subjects are allperceived more valuable. As a country we lag behind others in the developed world academically. (according to global testing). image

    I also think it is acceptable to never bring your kit and to have your parents write a note for you every week with a myriad of excuses.  Which of course spirals further upwards childhood obesity.

    I went to a secondary with enormous playing fields and pool but it had the effect of turning me off sport.  I think it was the PE staff as I'd loved it all at primary school!

    Schools are not there to fix all of society.  Students are in school for 5 hours a day. A change in national ethos - free provision/ clubs maybe but ultimately it will always come back to those with the dedicated parents/ money and the will to support such things. Interesting were the statistics on medal winning and attendance of a private school.

  • WilkieWilkie ✭✭✭
    Ronnie Mewes wrote (see)

    ... I recently had placement from university and did some work in my old school and some children will even just sit PE out and not do it!? When I was at school which was not long ago at all everyone in my class wanted to do PE and it was something to look forward to! Even if they had forgot their kit they would raid the school football team or rugby team for some kit. ...

    I have rather different memories of sport at school.  It was OK in the summer, but I hated having to go out and play hockey in the winter.  Fortunately we didn't do cross-country (living in a large town), I'm sure it would have put me off running for ever.

    PE was compulsory, no sitting it out allowed, so once I got to about 14 my friends and I would bunk off PE.

    You can only encourage kids to try sport.  If they like it, they'll want to carry on, but if you force them they will often hate it on principle!

    I think there will be a short period of huge enthusiasm, followed by a tailing off.  Schools which have sold their playing fields can't get them back, and there is little money to put into equipment.


     

  • Not just improving PE in schools, it would be great if more money was spent on local sports clubs for outside school hours. Somewhere that kids can go to learn new sports from dedicated coaches (not just a jack-of-all-trades PE teacher), and where they can maybe get away from the label of being 'bad at sports' that they might have been pegged with in their school peer group.

    Is anyone part of the Sport Makers volunteer program? Looks like a good way to get more community involvement in encouraging kids into sports http://www.sportmakers.co.uk/ 

  • My daughter's school has massively more facilities than I ever did at school and huge areas of playing fields. Probably why one of the ex pupils was a gold medalist.
  • E mmyE mmy ✭✭✭

    @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".

  • The facilities are just one ingredient. There are the after school clubs, the weekend clubs, the input of money from parents for extra activities, the input of parents time and encouragement. I think all children like to play games of some sort. For some it will be cricket and football and for others it may be streetdance or ballet. The more opportuninties to find something they like the better.
  • Angling Archery Athletics Badminton Baseball Bowls Canoeing Cricket Cycling Darts Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme Fencing Football  Golf Hockey Horse Riding Keep Fit Martial Arts Netball Orienteering Rambling Rugby Sailing Shooting Squash Swimming Tennis  Volleyball

    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.

  • Personally, teaching has never been 'just a job' to me but more of a vocation and I still enjoy it approaching my 20th year. At the moment, for lots of reasons, working in schools is very tough and, if it is 'just a job' to some then they tend not to last long!
  • 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.

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