Teaching School-Age Sport

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, we are all indebted to my noble friend Lord Addington for bringing to our attention once more the twin and linked issues of sport in our schools and in adult life. This topic of course grows steadily in importance and preoccupies public attention to an ever greater extent as we get closer to next year’s Olympic Games. However, the Olympic Games concern the world’s sporting elite. It is the rank and file amateur sporting associations and schools across the country with which this debate has rightly been mainly concerned.

If the state of school sport in the United Kingdom were all that we would like it to be today, with the majority of children being classified as having demonstrated “exceptional performance” under the national curriculum level descriptors on leaving school, we would all be confident that they would be likely to flock with enthusiasm of their own accord to the plethora of amateur associations and clubs that operate in every corner of our kingdom. Sadly, however, in many of our state schools sporting performance leaves much to be desired. Departmental figures for 2010 reveal the depressing statistic that only one in five state schools regularly played in competitions with other schools and that only two children in five regularly played competitive sport, even within their own school, and all this despite more than £2 billion having been spent in attempts to rectify the position.

The independent sector, on the other hand, continues to provide many centres of excellence, as shown by Millfield School, for example, with its outstanding sporting record. At school level, partnerships between the state and independent sectors—a point that as a former general-secretary of the Independent Schools Council I always stress wherever appropriate—offer an immensely important way forward, as I think more and more people have come to appreciate over recent years.

Although the report is some years old, the Institute of Youth Sport at Loughborough University has analysed sporting partnerships between the independent and state sectors. The report mentions numerous benefits to the pupils involved, including increased self-esteem, motivation expectations, new chances to try sports that had not previously been available, the establishment of new links between schools and local clubs, and the dispelling of misplaced preconceptions that the pupils in the two sectors had about each other. As many speakers in this debate have stressed, schools must be opened as fully as possible to the wider community. Such great gains—to individuals and to society as a whole—should be extended as widely as possible. School partnerships between the two sectors must be conducted on an equal basis, bringing enjoyment and satisfaction on both sides. For my part, I continue to regret that as soon as possible I fled from the rugby field and the cricket pitch for the tranquillity of the school library.

What should be our overall aim? If we could work towards ensuring continuity for pupils, we could end the distinction between school sport and sport in later life, and the two would become merely different points along the same spectrum, as my noble friend Lord Addington stressed at the outset. My noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint also lent strong support for that view. I believe that this is what we should be trying to do, especially if we are to avoid squandering that increased enthusiasm and participation created by the Olympic Games for which everyone hopes. In too many previous Games in other countries, participation has soared in the immediate aftermath, only to tail off sharply over a longer period. If Britain’s Games serve as a catalyst for the mixing of schools and local sports clubs, its legacy will last longer than the stadium’s own steel.

Success in this venture will spring from partnerships between sports organisations and the nation’s schools, underpinned by a high degree of volunteering. Apart from areas where government agencies such as Sport England could help to facilitate such partnerships, progress should proceed as far as possible without heavy-handed bureaucratic intervention. Perhaps more responsibility for the initiatives that are undertaken could rest primarily with school heads, although of course the local clubs themselves would be equally important partners.

Finally, and most importantly, such a strategy would go a long way towards improving the health of scores of children and encourage the virtues of sportsmanship that are just as important off the field as they are on it. It was Cicero who taught us that:

“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigour”.