Hands up who hated PE at school? I did. Navy synthetic knickers, sadistic PE teachers, being picked last for just about everything. Hideous. Any bullying that occurred in the science lab, or English lesson, seemed to be amplified on the sports field. I developed avoidance tactics for cross-country replicated only in those my cat displays for her basket and the prospect of a trip to the vets. It would probably have been no surprise whatsoever had I left school overweight, under-confident and with a fear of physical exercise to carry with me for the rest of my life.
Why didn't I? Because my run-of-the-mill comprehensive employed a dance teacher alongside the typical hockey, netball & football fanatic PE teachers. I was good at dance and finding that talent did more for my confidence, social skills and self-belief than a string of UCAS points ever would. As anyone who is good at anything (baking, programming, fly-fishing) will tell you; finding your talent gives you an outlet, a way of both losing yourself in and expressing yourself to the world. As Paula Abdul would say: it gives you a niche.
Finding that niche for me was total fluke. Imagine if my talent had been archery, or rowing, or cycling or some other less common form of physical exercise. Imagine if my headteacher saw no value in encouraging kids to exercise (perhaps a PE-hater themselves). Or if they were a rugger-playing traditionalist who thought that only competitive sport mattered. My life would have been different without a shadow of a doubt.
Now imagine that, on a national basis, someone somewhere had the foresight to recognise that what happened with me didn't need to be a fluke. That giving kids the opportunity to engage in a form of physical exercise that they were passionate about could have really fantastic consequences. That it mattered immensely. That kids who had the opportunity to fall in love with physical exercise acted up less, concentrated better, performed better. That it was the kind of thing that changed lives and so was worth investing in. Not a huge sum of money. Say 2% of the education budget overall.
Utopia? Nope. That's exactly what the School Sports Partnerships existed for. 450 people dedicated nationally to giving children access to the widest variety of sport and physical exercise the UK education system has ever provided. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of kids participating in two hours or more of sport and physical exercise through school increased from 23% to 94%. For £17 per child per year.
They weren't perfect. Some head teachers still don't think sport is important enough to spend money on. Some teachers still don't want to be trained to deliver sport. Some of the people working in the SSP weren't very good (show me a workplace where that ain't the case). Every so often the Daily Mail would run a horror-story piece about how much public money was being wasted teaching kids Dodge-ball. But they were working. They were working because we put a value and a focus on engaging kids in all forms of physical exercise, not just the sort they play at Eton. They were working because the majority of people running them were experts in both spotting talent and igniting a passion for sport in the previously disengaged. Experts in managing regional and national competitions and festivals, providing training and equipment to schools, linking schools with sports clubs, managing teams of qualified coaches, juggling budgets and evaluating success and adapting accordingly. For £17 per child per year.
A folly? A luxury we can ill afford in these austere times? Personally I reserve those labels for things like M.P.'s duck houses, Trident and Prince Andrew. I happen to think that School Sport is an essential. My 8-year-old self would laugh in my face at that statement, as would our current Education Secretary. And I'd credit them both with roughly the same level of understanding about these things.
Those who know me know that I have a personal interest in SSPs because my husband manages one and will, in all likelihood, lose his job as a result of aforementioned Education Secretary's slash-and-burn approach to School Sport. And I am pretty angry about that - particularly as his school seem to be managing the redundancy process as if UK Employment Law has the same relevance to them that nuclear physics does to Jedward. But I have faith in Mr. L. I see his brilliance and know he will find his niche (Paula, or no Paula).
But I'm actually really bloody angry that no-one seems to think giving all kids the opportunity to discover a physical activity that they love is important enough to save properly, and for the long term. I'm hopping mad that politicians and celebrities seem to pick up a cause-du-jour, make a fuss until the government pretends to make a U-turn, and then promptly forget it. But mainly I'm door-slammingly furious at the way the whole thing has been handled.
Initially, Mr Gove attempted to paint the SSPs as another failed Labour initiative that had wasted taxpayers' money on needless bureaucracy. Then, when hundreds of thousands of children, teachers, parents and Olympians pointed out that this was boohickey, he claimed that he wasn't actually going to abandon them. No; he had a better plan. As far as I can see this is another one of those 'better plans' cobbled together on the back of a Houses of Parliament napkin after it becomes glaringly obvious that something really PR-damaging might be about to happen (see NHS & EMA 'u-turns' for similar examples). This 'better plan' involves spending just 84p per child per year holding a few sports days in the run up to the Olympics. After which... well... it seems no-one's actually found that bit of the napkin yet.
I don't think this is good enough. I'm not daft, I know we need to make cuts. I know we need to be more efficient. I know some things aren't working. I'd just like to have faith that those people who end up making the decisions on what we do and how we do it might give it more than just a cursory thought. Y'know; do what we pay them to do. Think it through, have an actual strategy, plan for the long term. Be honest about their intentions and ideologies. Stop effing around with stuff that actually works just because it was initiated by the previous administration. Stop trying to razzle-dazzle us with pretend U-turns and pretend 'consultations'. Stop throwing the baby out with the bath water. Or maybe that's Utopia.
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