“Sporty” Brown’s new campaign
I am struck by Gordon Brown’s new initiatives to renew sporting rivalries in and between schools, it’s something I’ve banged the drum about on the odd occasion, he wants to introduce a national school sports week to, championed by Dame Kelly Holmes. Brown said;
“We need to put school sport back where it belongs, playing a central role in the school day. I was lucky enough to have primary and secondary schools that had sport at the centre of their ethos. I want every child to have that opportunity to take part.”
I have regaled stories in this blog of the days when I played football at school, as well as rugby and my useless attempts to play cricket, apart from being fun it encouraged fitness, team work, leadership skills, and a sense of individual achievement. we had competitive leagues within my own school and enjoyed annual “house” competitions and annual competitive matches against the “old boys” and also against the “masters”, additionally we fielded teams against other schools in local leagues for football, rugby, cricket, hockey and athletics. Those days are sadly long behind us and the competitive “edge” has been removed from an awful lot of schools, and now we worry about the obesity of our children and the lack of competitiveness in business, it can hardly come as a surprise after the destructive meddling of those who declared that ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ were damaging concepts for children.
Brown’s proposed £100m investment over the next five years is pitifully small, but if we manage to win some of it in South Tyneside perhaps we can start with some small schoolyard schemes that involve competition on a small scale, let’s face it he isn’t exactly making a mountain of cash available. Perhaps we can have a five-a-side football championship, a netball championship, or even some small trophies that each school can use to reward house champions in various competitions. I’m sure that our good councillors in South Tyneside can work with the educational establishment to formulate some exciting and imaginative ideas.
It is something that we must do in schools, it is an essential element for driving competitiveness in the big wide world once we leave education, and it is a feature of school life which should never have been allowed to wither away.
