If David Cameron has done one good thing, it’s in proving that you can’t run the country using Economist leader articles as a best practice guide. He came to power railing against the sofa government of Tony Blair, the alleged control freakery of public sector targetry, and the dangerous, anti-democratic proliferation of special advisers. But it turns out that things fall apart when the centre cannot hold, and that, shorn of direction at the heart of government, you get the coalition: a witless, directionless chimera that stumbles from unforced error to unforced error.
It sometimes appears as if, having proved to be a thoroughly indifferent prime minister, Cameron wants to return to a role he excelled at: leading the opposition. Either that, or he’s just a master of brass-necked chutzpah. Cameron is right: we do need more and better funded sport in our schools. But it’s unclear how scrapping the requirement to teach two hours of sport a week, while defunding school sport, is going to achieve that. For a party that continually drones on about the power of the private sector, the Conservatives don’t seem to understand how the real world operates: in pretty much every job you have targets and objectives. If you don’t meet those targets, then you get the sack. Why should the public sector be any different? The record of the last government is unarguable: targets worked, they raised standards in every sector they were used in. If Cameron wants to improve school sport, then he can: he just lacks the inclination. The real reason why the Conservatives are so reluctant to use targetry is that they don’t want government to work, full stop.
The problem for Cameron is that he isn’t even as good at opposition politics as he used to be. I remember, during the dying days of the Blair government, listening to a talk by Ed Miliband – then a junior minister – who said that Cameron’s great success, thus far, had been projecting an air that he was a different kind of Conservative, that he was comfortable with modern Britain. Six years on, Cameron no longer looks or sounds comfortable with modern Britain. There are two problems with his claim that the school sport target was met by schools teaching two hours of ‘Indian dancing’. The first is that it’s simply not true: if any school would have been ideally placed to eschew competitive sports for two hours of Bhangra, it would have been my own secondary school, but, unfortunately for me as a perennial last-choice, we played competitive sports. The second is that it’s a loathsome thing to say: is there anything less worthy about teaching ‘dancing’ in schools in lieu of competitive sport if the prefix ‘Indian’ is added?
The truth is, dancing is an exhausting, demanding, and, yes, competitive, activity, regardless of whether it’s contemporary, tap, break, ballet, or Indian. There is a long and dishonourable tradition in British politics that when administrations start to flatline, they give a hard blow on the dog whistle. That’s what Cameron’s doing in attacking ‘Indian dancing’. The good news is, he’s wrong: as shown by the widespread derision that his remarks met. Conservative thinkers regularly wonder why they fall short among ethnic minority voters, even in affluent areas. Here’s a tip: if you think the word ‘Indian’ is a counter-argument, don’t be surprised if you struggle to appeal to Indian and other ethnic-minority voters.
What do we actually want in sports funding? British Cycling performance director David Brailsford is right: elite sport in Britain is in good shape. But there’s a terrible void in the 14-18 bracket, when far too many people, particularly girls and young women, stop playing sport of any kind, and fall into unhealthy patterns of lifestyle. What we need is a system – well-funded and with clear performance targets – that allows the best of the best to become the next Mo Farah (but equally, the next Darcey Bussell, too), while encouraging everyone to keep up some kind of sport, even if it’s just an aimless kickabout at their local park. Time to put down the dog whistle, Dave.
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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb
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My wife, who has worked in junior schools for many years, was quick to point out that, yes, sometimes PE time is used for cross-curricular activities such as learning dances from other cultures, and the reason for this is that this is the only time a class can gain access to the school hall. Sometimes it’s best to ask the people doing the job!
I loved the Indian dancers in Eric Idle’s section of the Olympics closing ceremony. I think if Indian dancing is available that is a good way of engaging students who dont want to play hockey/football etc
I’m unconvinced that learning dances from other cultures is a particularly useful thing for pupils to be doing. It seems nothing more than the fetishisation of the ‘exotic’. I don’t expect to see morris dancing on the curriculum either. Which is not to say that there should not be alternatives to competitive team sports, gymnastics, swimming, athletics all being good examples. We don’t want a situation where pupils are doing crazy golf or ten pin bowling (real examples).
At my secondary school both Golf (well going to a golf range and whacking 50 balls) and 10 pin bowling were options for PE. This was 1985-87, so during the Thatcher years, at a stae Secondary Modern. We had one hour of PE each week for half the year as there weren’t enough facilities for the whole year group to do PE at the same time. Prior to that I’d attended an independant school on a scholarship till it went bust. There we had 11 hours of sports each week, which did include Golf and Bowls (Green rather than 10-Pin) from time to time but also included Running (cross country and track), Rugby, Soccer, Volley Ball, Hockey, Cricket, Baseball, Table Tennis, Weight training, Boxing, Javelin, Shot Putting, Swimming and Jumps (long and high) amongst other activities.
At the junior school I attended we did have dance once a week, Engish Folk and Country and Western styles as I recall.
Whether you include dance in the PE curriculum would have more to do with availabiity of facilities and some one to teach it, I think. The aim of PE is to give the kids exercise, if that is by energetic dance then that’s fine as an option.
11 hours?! Goodness me. I have no particular desire to see Indian dance blacklisted, merely it seems to me that with (correctly) limited time in the curriculum for PE one might want the biggest bang for one’s buck in terms of fitness promotion. As a secondary concern one wants options that kids don’t want to run a mile from. Generally I think that calculus will be best served by ‘traditional’ sports
The school day ran 08:30 to 17:30 4 days a week and 08:30 to 17:00ish 2 days a week (we had a 6 day week, Sunday was the only day we had off). The time from 14:00 to 16:00 was set aside for sports and other vocational activities. Monday was Combined Cadet Force, Tuesday and Friday were ‘Team Training’ (generally if you weren’t on a school team you’d be roped in to assist, act as tackle dummie &c), Thursday was ‘Clubs’ for most people but was also when Typing classes were held and Wednesday and Saturday were ‘General Games’. On top of that was an hour of PE. 1 hour PE + 2*2 hours ‘Team Training’ + 2*3 hours General Games makes 11 hours. Technically General Games was supposed to finish at 16:00 but it so
often continued past that time that I counted that as 3 hours, had it finished on time then we only did 9 hours of sports a week. As I recall come of the more senior team (First XV in Rugby and First XI in Cricket) also had evening practices after Prep.
From what I gather that amount of sport is not uncommon in the independent sector.
That many hours a week means that you can introduce non-traditional sports without stiinting the traditional ones. 11 hours of rugby, cricket or soccer each week would get very boring very quickly. Although general games seemed to be a long distance run (usually of the “Teacher drives with thermos and sandwiches to distant point, kids run to said point and get checked in then run back” type) more often than not.
Personally I’m in favour of a longer school day as it allows more variety in terms of vocational and extra academic classes (especially for those pupils who have special educational needs) and means that you don’t have working parents having to struggle to get in on time in the morning after dropping off the kids at school then disappear in the middle of the afternoon to pick them up and drop them at the child minders or take them home. Maybe 9-11 hours of sports a week is excessive, but how about 5? Obviously there’d need to be more facilities but at least there’d be a chance to inject some more variety. At the state school I attended the choices for boys were Soccer or Golf/Bowling (they offered one or the other of these, never both at the same time) and for girls were Netball or Golf/Bowling. They didn’t even switch to summer sports in the summer. I remember there were tennis courts with nets at the school but Tennis was never offered to the pupils and they were only used by adults in the evening.
As a governor of a school which is a successful, single sex, secular comprehensive and which uses random balloting rather than proximity to allocate most places, I am unconvinced and irritated by this piece.
We need fewer top-down dictats. The school I support does not need Whitehall targets. Within the law it is for a governing body to shape the school ethos and priorities. (Lord Adonis’s vision for Academies was RIGHT).
I am irritated that so many people want to micro-manage detail rather than trust school leaders to use their professional judgement.
The Government of the UK has far more important things to do than fiddle and fuss on this issue. The school of which I am a governor has always given a higher priority to competitive sport than any target.
Interesting that Head Boy Gove’s Department announced, today, the easing of the minimum standard for school playing fields, thus enabling Governing Bodies to sell off surplus land for housing development and the subsequent receipt used to fund the school repairs this stupid government stopped with the dumping of BS21, I assume!
Last night the Lib-Dems delivered their ‘Lies-Letter’ (they claim it’s a news letter, no frikkin way is that news) in which they accuse the Birmingham Labour party (who have just regained control of the council this year) of selling off out parks and school playing fields for housing development. These are the same Lib-Dems who, in coalition with the Tories, sold off the Council offices opposite where I live (a former school with playing fields still attached) for an undisclosed sum to a housing developer. Given that most of the housing in the area is low rise slum flats (i.e. Social Housing) it will be interesting to see what is built. I’m hoping for a small Tesco.