School Sports

This is not a political blog (if I wrote about what is happening at the moment I think I would spin downwards into gloom and despondency); its topic is running (and cycling).  However there is also an interest in exercise and public health - which is why I want to write about the proposed abolition of the the £162m school sports strategy. 

At a time when the public health consequences of an increasingly unfit and overweight population are well known, when the cost of diabetes is rising and set to rise much further, the government should be doing everything in its power to encourage exercise as well as a good diet. But what is it doing? What is it doing? 

Their first action was to abolish the ‘Change 4 Life’, a programme that attempted to encourage healthier living. In the past I have been critical of the tone of some of their information (though the comment of Travelling Hopefully is well worth reading as a counterbalance) but I think the intention is good. Information and encouragement are a necessary part of trying to change engrained behaviour. The job of any campaign is to try things, evaluate, develop, adapt, try again. Sometimes things are not right at the beginning and sometimes things take a long time to have an effect but you do not give up too early. If something is important (and this is) you have to keep going.

The next action was theatrically bizarre. The thing is they know that the most important element for weight is diet and they know the major problem with the western diet is fatty, sugary, salty, processed foods (that are extremely profitable for the major food manufacturers). They also know that it is hard to get these firms to change their ways (as an example you have the example of the difficulties the Food Standards Agency has had to impose a traffic lights system to indicate the relative healthiness of foods).  So the policy to diminish the role of the Food Standard Agency (after all those pesky scientists are just too bothersome) and place health policy in the hands of the big food companies was surreal.  Secretly they must believe that foxes have been much maligned are really make the best guards for  chicken coops.

And so to exercise:

There is a widespread concern about declining levels of activity amongst kids ( e.g this blog post) and school should have an important role in counterbalancing these changes in lifestyle. It can offer training, a chance to sample different forms of sport and exercise, help kids find the activities they enjoy, and provide competition to stretch abilities.  Sadly since the 1980s school sports provision  declined to such an extent that a few years ago it was little more than a token presence in the curriculum. (Some background on the ground to be made-up and how it was being attempted can be found here)

The consequence of poor PE for non-athletic kids is described in the  personal article by Johann Hari, which describes his effort to lose weight and the belated discovery that good, hard physical exercise is fun.

And then, suddenly, I felt angry. It occurred to me that what I had been given so brilliantly at Matt Roberts was a physical education. I had been taught how my body works, what will keep it in good condition, and what best fuels it. I had been taught how to exercise and stretch and eat. And I thought – why was I never taught this at school? Yes, there is a subject called physical education – but it does precisely the opposite. Just a few phrases will remind every mildly unhealthy person in Britain of what that experience is like: "All four corners of the gym – go!" "Pick a team!" "Jump OVER the horse!"

The School Sports Partnerships and the strategy that is to be scrapped tried to address this problem. Its aim was to increase participation and increase the options beyond the traditional, competitive sports. And it was succeeding. This is anecdotally reported here (which incidentally puts £162m in context - it is the cost overrun of the Olympic swimming pool). The more formal assessments are listed here 

In 2009 Ofsted surveyed the effect of the sports strategy on 99 primary and 84 secondary schools and noted the improvements. Their main recommendations were:

• continue funding the physical education and sports strategy for young people up to and beyond 2012 to ensure that schools have the capacity to sustain and build on the improvements they have introduced

• establish a post-16 entitlement to physical education and school sport, including providing access courses for students across the full range of ability levels

• enable sports colleges and school sport partnerships to be at the heart of local and regional initiatives to tackle childhood obesity and to promote a lifelong commitment to ‘being healthy’.

Their recommendations were definitely not to scrap everything and replace it with a few days of 'School Olympics' (i.e. sports days, or inter school competitions). In fact I can not find anyone with detailed knowledge of what is actually happening in our schools who agrees with this destruction.

And that is why I don't write about politics. I cannot cope with the distress of seeing evidence and reason count for nothing.


P.S This fact check show how politicians use statistics on the subject in a way that is misleading even if it is not strictly inaccurate.