Sport has still got a long way to go, Mr Gove

I don't think I was the only person surprised by the tone of the recent speech by Michael Gove, English Secretary of State of Education, at Brighton College.  He took the opportunity to highlight the inequalities that remain characteristic of British society, and especially advances offered those able to attend independent schools.

"It is remarkable how many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity and power in our society are held by individuals who were privately educated."

I was surprised because Mr Gove has never struck me as someone especially bothered by our evident social biases.  A great deal of Mr Gove's speech focused on the inequalities inherent within our sports systems.  Yet, in dismantling the Physical Education and School Sport programme in English schools, and especially the School Sport Partnerships, he was directly responsible for sabotaging one of the very few national policies to successfully break down barriers to participation of state-school pupils.


And the proposed solution of 'more competitive sport in schools' would be simply laughable if it was not for its promise of reversing many of the advances we have seen during the last decade, with the negative health consequences that will bring.


Simple solutions are great for dealing with simply problems.  But even Mr Gove is starting to recognise that the problems of participation and talent development are not simple.


At Brighton he said:

Take sport – where by definition the biggest names are in their teens, twenties and thirties.

As Ed Smith, the Tonbridge-educated former England player, and current Times journalist, points out in his wonderful new book “Luck”:

Twenty-five years ago, of the 13 players who represented England on a tour of Pakistan, only one had been to a private school. In contrast, over two thirds of the current team are privately educated. You’re 20 times more likely to go on and play for England if you go to private school rather than state school.

The composition of the England rugby union team and the British Olympic team reveal the same trend.
Of those members of England’s first 15 born in England, more than half were privately educated.

And again, half the UK’s gold medallists at the last Olympics were privately educated, compared with seven per cent of the population.
 

  
All of this is true.  And it has been known from at least the 1980s.


Here is a summary of some of the social and economic factors linked to high performance in sport:

Variable	Source
Parents achieved high standards in domain	Rotella and Bunker, 1987; Radford, 1990; Feldman and Goldsmith, 1986
Relatively high socio-economic status	Rowley, 1992; English Sports Council, 1997; Duncan, 1997
Ability and willingness to financially support participation and specialist support	Rowley, 1992; Kirk, et al, 1997a; Kay, 2000
Ability and willingness to invest high amounts of time to support the child’s engagement in the activity	Yang et al., 1996; Kirk et al., 1997b; Kay, 2000; Holt and Morley, 2004
Parents as car owners	Rowley, 1992
Relatively small family size	English Sports Council, 1997
Two-parent family	Rowley, 1992; Kay, 2000
Attendance at Independent School	Rowley, 1992

Table: social and economic influences on youth talent development in sport (based on Bailey and Morley, 2006)

These, and other, factors show why any ambition of a fair and equitable sports development system in countries like the UK will always be difficult.

Think of these data this way: imagine a child who is talented in a sport; the absence of each factor listed in the table above becomes a barrier to that child's development NO MATTER HOW TALENTED, OR COMMITTED HE OR SHE IS.

Mr Gove's speech acknowledges the unfairness of the UK sports system.  But there is another side to the matter: it is also stupid.  It is stupid because participation and advancement in sport are always undermined by factors that have absolutely nothing to do with interest or ability.

So it is a refreshing to read Mr Gove's speech.  Perhaps it will bring about renewed awareness of the problems inherent with the UK sport system (and all other Western systems).  But this awareness needs to be coupled with an acknowledgement that simple solutions will not do.

We need a root and branch re-evaluation of the whole system, and a suite of solutions based on evidence.  And we are a long way from adopting that sort of approach in sport.

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The one book of which there is never a shortage

Michael Gove, English Secretary of State for Education, has caused controversy (again) with his decision to send a copy of the King James Bible to every school in the country.


At an estimated cost of £375,000, the aim is to mark the 400th anniversary of what is undeniably a very important book.  In the words of the Department for Education:

"the King James Bible continues to shape our culture. Understanding the story of its publication and the impact it has had on today's English-speaking society is an important part of the teaching and learning of history and language."

This is probably all true.


Two questions come to mind, though.


First, will all similarly important books be sent to schools?  The Complete Works of Shakespeare?  Darwin's Origin of Species?  Victoria Beckham's Learning to Fly.  And if not, why has he chosen the one book of which there is never, ever a shortage in schools?  


Second, how does he imagine the eager population of a school (on average, about 150 in a Primary School; about 1,000 in a Secondary) will share this particular book?  Presumably he knows that most children can't happily share with one other child, let alone nine hundred and ninety-nine.  And this is true even when they don't care about the object of their attention.  Once they find out that the book will have a foreword by Mr Gove himself, schools across the country will descend into the animalistic frenzy of a One Direction concert.


Not surprisingly, secular groups have been outraged by this idea.  They see it as an unacceptable attempt to push Christianity further in schools.


But the King James Bible is not really a religious text in the way that 'the Bible' is.  Even Richard Dawkins likes it.  The book is one of those texts that make up what is sometimes called 'the canon': the books that form a literary foundation of our culture.


Personally, I think it is a great idea to promote great books.  But I cannot scratch the niggly feeling that this will not the first of a series of grand actions, and that it might just be a rather costly attempt to support a view of England that belongs in the history books.

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Stand up Mr Gove!

Michael Gove has decided that there is not enough competition in schools.

So do many people, you might say, and they all read the Daily Mail. Sadly, Mr Gove is the Secretary of State for Education; I have no information about his reading preferences.

Mr Gove's evidence for his claim is a little unclear, but he seems to have drawn on a mixture of research and personal conviction. His research reports that one in three pupils do not take part in internal school competition.

I have no idea where he sourced this finding, but it does seem a little concerning. But all is not lost as I have seen research evidence that two in three pupils DO take part in competitions, and that seems a rather promising finding! In fact, since the low tide of school sport in the 1980s, two-thirds of young people taking part in intra-school sport is a remarkable achievement.

Nonetheless, Mr Gove thinks/feels/knows that there is just not enough competitive sport in schools. Perhaps competition is like beauty or truth or celery: it is impossible to have too much of it.

Clearly he feels very strongly about this, because he keeps going on about it. And he continues despite the almost total rejection of his views by those who work in sport or education for a living. Physical education teachers, for example, have looked on in open-mouthed bewilderment as their political leader casually hacks away at the progress they have made over the last decade or so.

Well, Mr Gove was recently joined in his campaign to save PE and school sport from those who know what they are talking about by a recent article on the subject. Dr Andrew Franklyn-Miller is a "sports and exercise medicine expert" (which I think means he is a doctor).

Writing for the BBC, Dr Franklyn-Miller also thinks that schools need to push competitive sport. For him, the blame for the current namby-pamby attitude stems partly from our soft society which deems it,

"acceptable to aspire to participate rather than achieve, to hope that vaguely defined skills might maintain fitness rather than test our children against benchmarks".

And partly from the national curriculum for PE with its talk of "aspirations of stringing together movements", floating in a swimming pool and "achievements" of participation and understanding.

What should we do? According to Dr Franklyn-Miller:

"Let it be competitive and let us test our children against each other and identify those who need support from the network of doctors trained in sport and exercise medicine as an existing Olympic legacy."

It is difficult to know how to respond to this article. This is partly because I have a suspicion that 'Dr Franklyn-Miller' is really Mr Gove's more impressive pen-name, so self-preservation is hindering my commentary.

Here are the clues:

1) Both of them talk about the need for 'more competition' in schools, despite the fact that England, at least, has one of the most comprehensive competitive sports structures in the world.

2) They talk about school sport, but neither mention the people who actually run it, and who have made such extra-ordinary progress in recent years: PE teachers.

3) They are disconcertingly vague about the bases of their assertions. Gove just states things as if they were self-evidence truisms. Franklyn-Miller does this too, and adds a few suspicious quotations, to boot (as far as I can tell, the national curriculum for PE never mentions "aspirations of stringing together movements", at all).

4) They both seem to have a faith that competition is inherently motivating for young people, when in fact a huge body of evidence suggests that this is not the case for all. Some like competitive sport; some like dance, or outdoor activities; and some like recreational, but non-competitive physical activities. In fact, an over-emphasis on competitive is routinely given by young people, themselves, as a reason for dropping out of sport.

5) And they both simply assume that the imposition of adult sporting values and practices will drive up participation and performance standards.

Dr Franklyn-Miller says that the curriculum needs to be built on on the "lessons learnt in athlete development, and sport talent identification, not to build potential superstars but to change a lifestyle." What are these lessons? If actual science is to be believed, rather than the hunches of a sports doctor, the first three lessons are:

1. do not treat children like mini-adults
2. do not treat children like mini-adults
3. do not treat children like mini-adults

Both politicians and doctor claim to be bound by the demands of evidence. But neither Gove or Franklyn-Miller show any awareness of the huge body of literature that should inform their pronouncements.

Vitally, there is no evidence to support their guiding assumption that more competition will improve participation or achievement. On the contrary, to the best of our knowledge the most successful curriculums offer a wide range of sporting experiences, including many that are non-competitive. And the underlying character of these experiences ought to be play and enjoyment, especially in the primary years. As even Franklyn-Miller acknowledges, lifelong physical activity is built on a foundation of 'physical literacy', or fundamental movement skills, or 'the basics'. Too much competition too soon undermines the development of these skills.

Does it matter?

Unfortunately it does. I suspect that Mr Gove, Dr Franklyn-Miller and myself would all agree that regular sporting activities are among the valuable experience society can offer young people. We'd also agreed that physical education and sport ought to be part of everyone's schooling, probably as a matter of right. My worries start when they start to talk about turning these nice thoughts into practice.

Sport is a powerful resource for young people and for society. But like all resources, its use is value-free. The value of sport for young people comes not from the activities themselves but from the quality of the experiences offered by teachers and coaches. Provide a variety of positive sporting experiences for young people and we are some way to laying the foundations for lifelong physical activity and love of sport. Mess this opportunity up by playing to the ill-informed calls for 'more competition', or to push adult sport earlier and earlier into children's lives and the least serious consequence is likely to be a generation lost to the incredible potential of sport.

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