Children: Sport

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I shall take just one moment to draw attention to the importance that sport can have for disadvantaged children. I can probably do this best with a very small story. Once, I was sitting with a very wise and experience head teacher at a school near Eastbourne for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and I asked him, “How do you make contact with a new boy when he arrives?”. He said, “I sit him down in my study and I say ‘Tell me about yourself’, and the boy starts and tells me all the awful things he’s done and all the things he can’t do and how naughty he’s been, that he doesn’t have any hope and so on. This usually goes on for about half an hour, sometimes three-quarters of an hour. Eventually, when he dries up, I say, ‘Right. Now you’ve told me all the things you can’t do. Let’s talk about the things you can do’”.