Children: Competitive Sport

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, for tabling this debate. I have a number of interests in sport, all of which are declared in my entry in the register.

Too often, the offer in schools is seen as a choice between competitive and non-competitive sport, and the sporty and non-sporty children. Sadly, it is not quite that simple. As noble Lords may imagine, I am a huge supporter of competitive sport for everyone, but delivered in the right way, not just for those who are talented. It should be used as part of a drive to encourage lifelong participation in physical activity. Currently, 80% of women are not fit enough to be healthy. This alone should give us cause to think about primary school provision because that is where disengagement begins.

In recent years there have been many improvements in how sport is taught and coached, along with the development of the talent pathway and its relationship with competition. However, age grouping is a rather crude measure, as while young people develop there can be a significant disparity in skill level, and even a little training can make a huge difference in performance. Sport Wales is doing some great work in this area which is,

“player-centred, development driven and competition-supported”,

moving away from competition being the main focus. This is very positive because it will do a great deal to improve people’s experience of competition and keep them involved for longer.

I have been on the losing side many times and, quite frankly, it is miserable. Many sports have guidelines on how winners should behave, and I am glad to see that this will be extended to what I call overenthusiastic parents. There has been a lot of debate about the right way to encourage fair play and, while losing can be perhaps a little easier to understand, if not accept, as you get older, it is down to the skill of the coaches and teachers to balance competitive teams but not in a patronising way. I have seen some great examples of balance and, while being beaten by a massive margin is miserable, knowing that someone was being easy on you is worse. We should be more creative, but I do not wish to see junior competitions dumbed down; trophies should be awarded for excellence, effort, and commitment.

The Minister for Sport in another place, Mrs Helen Grant, has been extensively quoted this weekend speaking about girls in sport. She was building on research that has shown why many girls drop out of physical activity and how they feel about competition. We know the issues—they have not changed that much in the years that I have been involved—but one piece of news that I am really pleased about is that the ECB has professionalised the women’s game and is offering paid contracts. I heartily congratulate it and cannot wait for other professional sports to follow. There may always be challenges around body image for young girls but we can make it cool for girls to be sporty and competitive, and what the ECB has done is very powerful.

What we can change relatively easily is how we deliver physical activity in schools. Young people need to be physically literate. If they are taught good, basic skills, they will be able to take part in a wide range of activities with increased confidence and think more positively about participating and competing. For me, the solution is simple: we need to help teachers to deliver physical literacy. The investment that the Government have made is incredibly useful, but think what we could do if we took a radical approach and changed initial teacher training. Can the Minister update us on what plans Her Majesty’s Government have to look at teacher training, especially at primary level, so that a lot of women teachers who may have dropped out of sport between the ages of seven and 12 can understand the principle of physical literacy and are better able to teach core skills? It is not about measuring how far children can jump, run or throw. We do not expect children to do long division without teaching basic maths skills, but that is what we are doing to our children in PE.

None of this is easy to get right—if it were, we would have done it a long time ago. If this were a school report, it would read that we have shown some progress but we could do a lot better.