Creating a buzz around sport

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games – an event that Lord Coe pledged would inspire two million people to take up sport and physical activity – is almost upon us. This is surely welcome news to every parent and/or carer who must be haunted by the fact that by 2050 almost 90 per cent of children will either be overweight or obese.

But the reality appears to be well short of Lord Coe’s dream. According to a recent survey by The Observer, fewer than a third of state schools have signed up to the UK Government’s plan to use the ‘Spirit of the Olympics’ to revive competitive sport in schools – raising further doubts about the long-term legacy of the 2012 London Games. According to the survey, only 6,500 primary and secondary schools out of 23,000 in England have registered for the School Games, forcing the organisers to extend the registration deadline from September to November.

Is that so surprising, given the fact that many of 17,000 primary schools lack the facilities or staff to deliver competitive sport for their pupils, even with some government help? What is the real problem? Is it that head teachers are so pressured into meeting academic targets that ‘sport’ is not a priority? Could it be that teachers responsible for developing and delivering the sports curriculum are already so busy that for them 2012 is more a spectator activity rather than a participative one? Perhaps the truth lies in the fact that, to quote one sports teacher we met recently: “Only two out of 10 girls I teach are interested in sports.”

Sport and activity priorities
Perhaps what we should be advocating in our schools is physical activity as well as sports. After all, most young people’s attitudes to sport do not make it a priority for their teachers and head teachers.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the ground between all these suppositions. Talking to young people and the adults responsible for their activity programmes, it seems fewer of them are interested in playing sport or getting involved in other forms of physical activity. Anyone who has ever tried to get a group of reluctant teenage girls to exercise will be familiar with the battery of excuses they have for avoiding it.

To quote a recent pamphlet I read: ‘It’s true the thought of exercise doesn’t make everyone jump for joy, but no one was born with a ‘rubbish-at-sport’ gene.’ The excuses are plentiful, ranging from the “I’m no good at it” to “It’s not cool!” And the killer: “I’d rather play with my computer/watch TV/talk to my mates.”

Creating a buzz
So how do you excite young people, especially teenage girls, enough to raise their activity levels sufficiently to establish good lifelong skills? How can we help them derive sufficient health benefits in the short term, to reduce the risk of over 20 diseases ranging from asthma and diabetes, to obesity related illnesses? 

Perhaps the problem does lie in the ‘S’ word: sport. Thousands of people take part in fun runs ranging from Race for Life – the largest women-only fundraising event in the UK – to the London Marathon, an event which attracts over 35,000 runners and is viewed by over six million people in 150 countries. Are these ‘sporting events’ and would their participants consider themselves sportsmen and women? I would argue not.

More active, more often
Every year millions of people attend dance classes, spin sessions, yoga, pilates and a whole host of other supervised work outs. They might not be officially taking part in sports, but they do derive all the benefits of doing so. Are they not part of Lord Coe’s Olympic Legacy dream? Just imagine what an impact there would be on the government’s £100bn health bill if we could persuade the 50 per cent of the population who are inactive, to be more active, more often.

Perhaps the focus on sport is blurring the issue. When he launched the School Games earlier this year, following an outcry over government cuts to the overall school sport budget, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said he wanted them to bring “the magic of the Olympics” into every school in the country.

Ministers said that the school games would revive competitive sport between schools, as well as sport in schools, as children and teachers became involved in high-profile new inter-school competitions in 30 different sports, culminating in finals at the Olympic park itself.

But many schools, particularly primary schools, claim to find the plans unconvincing because not only do they lack the grounds to stage the competitions but they have no means of transporting children to enable them to take part.

Games and partnerships
Some sports teachers claim that the Games are no substitute for School Sport Partnerships, a successful network which organised games within and between schools and cost government almost £170m a year – the funding for this was withdrawn following a temporary reprieve.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that many claim that the funding allocated (over £7,000 a year per secondary school) to release a teacher for one day a week to help coordinate the games in their area is not ‘ring fenced’, thereby allowing the schools to use it to use the money for anything it wants to and not ‘sport at all’ – for which it was originally intended.

Back to my earlier point: the issue might be the preoccupation with concept of sport and the subsequent need to have motivated and qualified staff who can deliver a meaningful lesson, to a group of (at best) agnostic pupils. 

Let me therefore give you the David Stalker solution to this conundrum:

  • Our school children and young people must be active enough to derive some health/medical benefits from it
  • We must accept development of lifelong activity habits are as important as the delivery of functional skills
  • If schools do not have the ‘right’ resources on their payroll, they should be free to outsource this valuable service
  • Government must make sport and physical activity in schools a priority and provide the (ring-fenced) financial resources to deliver on this priority.
  • Service providers (the health and fitness industry and the National Governing Bodies of sports included) must work together more effectively and more extensively to create an activity pathway, or continuum which starts at the pre-natal stage and continues to the care home. Simple rules: difficult task.

Let me address the school/curriculum issue first, then tackle the resources conundrum. To me, teaching sport and physical activity is as important as teaching Arithmetic, English, Sciences and all the other subjects on the curriculum – if we are to prepare the children of today to be rounded adults tomorrow.

Moral obligation to fund
The government has a statutory and moral obligation to provide sufficient funds for schools to deliver a holistic education, not just an academic one.

Some might argue that the cost of insufficient knowledge about wellbeing related issues is as costly to the economy as a skills shortage. Deployment of ring-fenced resources at the discretion of the head teachers is key, i.e., to choose whether they want to employ dedicated PE (not just sports specialist staff) or whether to opt for an integrated sports and physical activity/education capability.

Is the issue about money or is it about strategy – or lack of? Some argue that there is a lack of clear strategy. Given the fact that £35m of lottery funding has been committed until 2014-15 the government is promising that £65m will be available in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to ensure one PE teacher per school is released for a day a week to ensure efforts to boost competitive sports are ‘embedded’.

Flawed focus on sport?
But, perhaps the current focus on sport, though well meaning, is flawed – given the teacher’s comments above. The government is committed to a sports-led strategy. The Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove declared: “I want competitive sport to be at the centre of a truly rounded education that all schools offer. But this must be led by schools and parents, not by top-down policies from Whitehall. I’m looking to PE teachers to embed sport and put more emphasis on competitions for more pupils in their own schools, and to continue to help the teachers in local primary schools do the same.”

But according to Richard Caborn, the sports minister when the UK launched its bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympics, the UK is “failing completely” to honour its pledge to increase sporting participation among adults and deliver a sports legacy. “There needs to be a major change of direction in the strategy on this.”

Perhaps the Legacy dream comprises 10 simple words: medals are good, but a more active nation is better. 

Written by David Stalker, CEO, Fitness Industry Association

For more information
www.fia.org.uk