PE teachers tell us why the government focus on competition in sport could hold back the next generation of gold medalists. What do you think about the new plans for school sports?
Lee Parkinson, ICT and PE co-ordinator at Davyhulme Primary School
I can't help but think that David Cameron has this issue on sports targets totally wrong. At this point, I must state that I fully support competition in sport and feel children experiencing competition is vital in building essential life skills such as determination, courage and willpower that they can apply in many different areas as they get older. What I don't agree with is that we need a complete change in culture and pure focus on competition.
I work at a primary school that has a flourishing sports programme due to the dedication of members of staff devoting so much of their own time running clubs, hosting events and coaching children outside the school day. This has been happening for many years, on top of their other responsibilities.
We have been very successful in numerous local and national competitions but our main achievement is boasting that every child represents the school in some sort of competition before they leave. Personally, I don't feel myself or my colleagues could do anymore to provide the children with opportunities to excel in sport.
Why do we do it? Well, personally I feel my duty as a teacher is to provide children with as many opportunities to excel and find a talent in whatever subject. What sport does more than a lot of other subjects is that it provides children with a healthy lifestyle and the right values to live by. It also gives children personal lifelong memories.
What the prime minister is blinded by is the fact that one of the main reasons we are winning so many golds at the Olympics is down to the previous government providing opportunities for all children to play, enjoy and love sport despite ability. Since the cut in school sport funding, the opportunities are deteriorating for children to experiment with different and lesser known sports.
In the past, funding was available for coaches to come into school to provide opportunities for all children to try different sports, they would then organise local competitions and make links for children to then join a local club.
With previous school sport funding I was able to give children opportunities to try sports outside my 'comfort zone' so to speak. Sports such as hockey, lacrosse, and athletics were just a few examples of various sports children at our school attempted before then joining local clubs if they had enjoyed and wanted to pursue further. This kind of approach was thriving in many local schools, however since the cut in funding it has become more difficult given that schools have so many other priorities and issues.
This has a knock-on effect onto the level of competition in schools, the only way you can get the best is by competing in numbers. Imagine if becoming an Olympic gold medallist is the pinnacle, underneath are national championships, followed by regional finals, county competitions, borough heats and finally club or school contests. If the gold medalist was never provided with the opportunity to first participate and enjoy a sport at the earliest level before competing and then excelling, he/she would have never reached that final goal.
If the government focuses purely on competition they are restricting the possibility of finding the next generation of gold medalists. To focus purely on competition from a young age breeds an elitist mentality that would only provide children who display potential at that moment to succeed. The government should focus on providing children with as many opportunities to try as many different sports as possible. Before competition is even spoken about children should be given the chance to build a passion for a sport.
Matt Bebbington, PE teacher at Wilmslow High School in Cheshire
Oh dear David and co, what a can of worms you have opened. The simple message from Mr Cameron seems to be "teachers, get off your backsides and make state school sport brilliant". But David, will we receive the relevant amount of funding and support to accommodate this dream?
One question springs to my mind given the government's stance on state school sport – do any Olympians leave their sporting success to chance? Of course not. Athletes invest in years of sustainable, long-term planning and dedication in order secure the best possible future outcome. Unfortunately, it seems the government's (lack of a coherent) plan for state school sport seems to be heavily reliant on chance, luck and individual circumstance.
On the surface, the scrapping of the compulsory 'box ticking' two hours of PE per week could be considered as a positive move: giving school leaders and and PE teachers local autonomy over their sporting curriculum. However, as we dig deeper, a complex web of factors come into play.
The level of importance given to PE by the school's leadership team - is it held in the same regard as mathematics, English and science or is it considered to be a burden that eats up valuable time from the exhausting task of climbing up the league table ladder?
What is the size of the PE department and how much funding is available for it? There is now less opportunity to ring fence funding for sport in state schools now the sport college movement is slowly grinding to a halt. Therefore, some school leaders may decide to redirect funding to enhance other curriculum areas in their school.
However, what is evident is that PE is a fertile melting pot where teamwork, personal discipline, resilience and grit are all skills that can be developed in abundance and transferred into other areas of a students' academic career. The effect of these transferable skills should not be underestimated.
We must also consider more human factors. Thousands of teachers around the country willingly give up their free time on a daily basis to provide high quality sporting opportunities for their students. What is the commitment of teachers in your school like? I remember my old boss telling me how he got his school's Saturday morning rugby programme off the ground. Every Saturday morning he had to sweep the local town to pick up the students and some cases knock on front doors to get them out of bed just to get them to home fixtures. Now, this was clearly going above and beyond his mandatory commitments but, 15 years down the line, the school now successfully competes nationally with the big private schools in the country.
Sport should be at the very heart of every school's curriculum, it should be in the same league as mathematics, English and science and schools need both funding and the dedication of its teachers to ensure the long term, country wide success of state school sport. Of course the Olympics will have an immediate impact on participation rates in school sport, however, I fear, in the current educational climate, the impact will be short term and rely more on chance, luck and the schools' individual priorities and circumstance rather than an intelligent, well thought out national model that could have positive reverberations for generations to come.
Matt Bebbington is a PE teacher at Wilmslow High School in Cheshire. He is in his fifth year of teaching He is currently involved in a national research pilot to develop a new and authentic KS3 PE curriculum with the Youth Sport Trust and the TOP Foundation. He is also a keen rugby coach who is in charge of the school's first XV rugby team and is also the first team backs coach at Stockport RUFC. Matt is a teacher adviser for the Guardian Teacher Network. Matt tweets as @BebbPEteach and blogs here.
Lee Parkinson has been teaching for five years and is the ICT and PE co-ordinator at Davyhulme Primary School in Manchester. The school was named Sports School of the year for the past two years its borough and Lee was named school sports practitioner in 2010. Follow Lee on Twitter @DPS_Year4.