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By Douglas MacAndrew
The Coalition Government have announced that 2 hours compulsory physical education will be dropped at state schools, begging the question, does the government want private schools to be the only domain where children can become future Olympians?
Apparently the Coalition want state schools to decide for themselves what level of physical education they want to be practiced in schools. The Minister for Education in this case should take a visit to some of the state schools that exist in London, and see firstly that teachers are poorly trained to take PE classes, and secondly most kids will opt to do nothing if there are no organised scheduled physical education classes.
We should ultimately ask ourselves this question. Do we want our future Olympians to be from the middle-class? Surely not. Have we forgotten that most of our top sprinters came from Haringey and Harlesdon and trained at New River, and most of them lived in Tottenham. We want sports to be open to everyone, and that means state schools must have an integrated sports programme with high level coaches brought in to work with PE departments to identify talent and encourage excellence. As a nation we are stronger if our state schools have a dynamic and effective sports programme, which should mean a compulsory threshold of sports participation. Have any views here send them to [email protected]
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