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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How do sports coaches use social media?

Hi!

We are gathering information relating to sports coaches’ use of Social Media platforms as part of an international survey.

For the purposes of this survey, ‘social media’ is a general term to describe all kinds of internet platforms or forums whose contents are created, published, improved and commented on by the users themselves.

We are asking sports coaches, whether voluntary or paid, to complete the online questionnaire at www.surveymonkey.com/s/sport-media and would appreciate your help and support in reaching the largest possible target audience from around the world, and from different sports so PLEASE circulate this message to any coaches within your networks.

We would like to thank you for your support in advance.

Yours in Sport,

Richard Bailey and Matthew Reeves

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Heroes and Zeros: who have been the best and worst Education chiefs in the UK?

The Secretary of State for Education is one of those government positions destined to attract a lot of attention. Holding overall responsibility for the nation's schools and pupils is difficult enough. It is made much more difficult by the evident fact that none of us seem able to agree on the aims, character or organisation of schools, in the first place1 Indeed, whether we need schools, at all!! Which raises some interesting questions: What has been the 'best' Secretary of State? And who has been the worst? In the name of impartiality, I offer no commentary on the candidates (I will almost certainly do this after the poll has closed, as I am only human). If you want to remind yourself of the basic facts, you can go use Wikipedia. Thanks you for your contribution.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

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An Olympic Legacy for 2012

AN OLYMPIC LEGACY FOR LONDON 2012?

"We can no longer take it for granted that young people will choose sport. Some may lack the facilities.  Or the coaches and role models to teach them. Others, in an age of 24-hour entertainment and instant fame, may simply lack the desire.  We are determined that a London Games will address that challenge. So London's vision is to reach young people all around the world.  To connect them with the inspirational power of the Games." 

(Lord Coe, Singapore, 6 July 2005)

"At the moment I don't see the policies being put in place that will build on the inspiration of the Games for young people and that will change their lives for a lasting sports legacy … There are too many schools still on two hours or less of sport a week, with no links to the local communities and clubs and volunteers, and that is a missed opportunity in the last six years. Politicians of all parties have the responsibility for setting policy and we have not seen that vision delivered."

(Lord Moynihan, chairman ofthe British Olympic Association, 19 November 2011)

[Note: Despite first impressions, it is not the case that everyone in the United Kingdom is a Lord!  There are also Ladies, Sirs and Dames.  And, of course, their servants]

It is widely held that the UK’s somewhat surprising victory in the competition to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games was at least partly the result of its representative’s ability to articulate a compelling legacy for the Games, that went far beyond the glories of two weeks of elite sport in July.  The Olympic Games is the biggest sporting and cultural event in the world – in the language of sport economists, it is a ‘mega-event’ – but there is an increasing expectation for hosts to provide more than just a sporting spectacle.

As can be seen from Sebastian Coe’s comments, taken from his rousing speech before the final decision of the host city was made, the UK bid was premised on using the Games as a stimulus for long-term social, economic and environmental change.  Likewise, London First, which represents big business in the capital, has asserted that,

“the 2012 legacy must be much more than a successful tournament and the regeneration of the Olympic Park site itself.  The Games must enhance London’s reputation as a dynamic, international city; catalyse the physical transformation of East London; and contribute to a step-change improvement in the skills, aspiration and employment of some of the country’s most deprived communities”.

But there have been increasing numbers of dissenters who have questionned successive governments’ commitments to the wider agenda of the Games.  Colin Moynihan’s statement is most significant, perhaps, because it came from someone very much within the UK’s sporting establishment.  And his is not a lone voice of concern.

The idea that major sporting events should seek to provide such a legacy has become commonplace in recent years.  Commentators usually refer to two examples as instances of successful legacy.  The Barcelona Games of 1992 has been hailed as a great success at almost every level, especially in terms of social and economic regeneration in the region.

But it was the Sydney games in 2000 that set the standard in terms of long-term and diverse effects.  Aside from the considerable improvement in sports performance in the host nation (Australia’s medal tally went up from 41 to 58, and stayed beyond the pre-Sydney level at Athens), its really significant benefits are more intangible.  The international perception of Sydney, and Australia as a whole, as a tourist and business destination has been transformed in the years following the Games and, according to some, the Olympic ideals - such as inspiration, friendship, fair play, perseverance, mutual respect, unity and joy in effort – somehow managed to bring about a reappraisal of attitudes to human and social rights.

Whether or not the Beijing Games can be considered a success depends, to a large extent, on whether or not we think that these political issues, especially human rights, matter in sporting events.  Seb Coe apparently does not think they do.

Of course, the selection of these cities to make the case for the Games is deliberate.  It would be naïve in the extreme to suppose that the hosting of a mega-event necessarily  results of regeneration.  For every success there are many more empty stadia, economic crises and lost opportunities.

In this respect, there are lessons to be learned from the analyses of Bent Flyvbjerg and his colleagues into the planning of megaprojects, such as tunnels, bridges and transport schemes.  They conclude:

“Rarely is there a simple truth … What is presented as reality by one set of experts is often a social construct that can be deconstructed and reconstructed by other experts” (Flyvbjerg, et al, 2003, p.60).

Flyvbjerg has demonstrated that on numerous occasions the advocates of such huge projects systematically misled the public in order to secure support and funding.

However, every case presents a possibility, and it is hard to deny the multifaceted potential of a well-planned, well-executed, well-supported Olympic Games for the host city, region and country. 

The Institute for Public Policy Research and Demos outlined five dimensions of an Olympic legacy for the London Games:

1) The social legacy – sport can in certain circumstances, provide an opportunity to involve a diverse range of people in delivering projects;

2) The employment legacy – there is little doubt that the London Olympics will generate a large number of new jobs, but there is a need for a more nuanced understanding of the employment potential of the Games than in terms of simple claims of numbers of jobs created;

3) The environmental legacy – there are fairly obvious environmental challenges presented by any mega-event, such as accommodating vast numbers of visitors, traffic and transport demands, energy and waste management;

4) The cultural legacy – culture as well as sport is supposed to create the foci of the Olympics.  The 2012 Games has the potential to focus international attention on the areas distinctive cultural assets.

5) The sporting legacy – the Games could act as a vehicle for stimulating increased participation, funding and facility development.

Yet, for all of the gushing excitement of politicians in London, many questions remain unanswered.  The research base on the wider effects of large-scale sporting events is still incomplete.  Academics have been critical of the misapplication of economic data by the promoters of such events for their own ends.  For example, whilst it might be the case that certain Games have resulted in the generation of more jobs in the region, critics have argued that the great majority were short-term, low-paid, or both.  And, of course, there is the danger of focusing on the benefits of an event without weighing up the costs.

Numerous groups have expressed concern at the growing expenditure associated with the event, at last count about £10billion, and the organisers of the 2012 Games have been criticised for their seeming reluctance to discuss their financial management and plans with external agencies.  Others have been critical of the relative investment in elite performance and the other aspects of London 2012.

Certainly, for a proposal based explicitly on young people’s participation and social transformation, discussions of actually implementing strategies have been negligible.

In an essay in Prospectmagazine, David Goldblatt presented a compelling case for Britain to start to take sport seriously.  More than three billion people tuned in to watch matches in the football World Cup in 2006, and the Olympics, for all of its faults, remains even more significant internationally.  No language or religion has sport’s scope or participation.  So the potential impact of the London Olympic Games in 2012 could be massive.

But if advocates for sport are to start to realise the sort of cultural importance that the arts have taken for granted for years, they will also need to be judged by the standards of planning, delivery and accountability that are normal in public life.

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Aims - what's the point of PE and sports coaching?

‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly … ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’  ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.  ‘I don’t much care where,’ said Alice.  ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.  ‘So long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.  ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’ (Lewis Carroll, 1865, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’)

To help understand the importance of aims within sport teaching, consider two encounters.  In the first, the teacher/coach uses her knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare young children for elite competition.  She draws on state-of-the-art scientific knowledge to ensure that her young players develop extraordinary physical and mental skills, and uses her excellent communication and motivational skills to keep the players training and their parents quiet.  By the nature of such training, lots of these players are injured or burnt out, and whilst the teacher/coach is upset for the children, she consoles herself that the situation is probably necessary if she is to achieve her ultimate goal: medals.

On the second encounter another teacher/coach uses her scientific knowledge to help the young people in her charge to have sporting experiences that are enjoyable.  For her, sport should be ‘fun’, whilst she knows that fun for six, sixteen and sixty years olds will take quite different forms.  This teacher plans her sessions with the intention of maximising enjoyment for all, and considers a session a good one if everyone leaves with a smile of their face.

These teachers/coaches are clearly involved in sport pedagogy, but who have markedly different conceptions of the role and value of sport in people’s lives.  The first teacher seems to think of the aims of sport mainly in social terms; for her, the purpose of sport is as a vehicle to win medals and glory, whether for the club or for the country.  The second teacher understands the point of sport in terms of personal satisfaction or enjoyment.  Casual observations in schools and sports clubs reveals that there are many teachers and coaches who assume the latter position, and who feel they have achieve their goal if everyone is ‘busy, happy and good’.  And, it is also not difficult to find evidence of the former approach, too, whether in the form of the brutal training of Chinese infant gymnastics or in the ‘survival of the fittest’ mindset of youth squads in many professional football clubs in the United Kingdom.

So, we can see two teachers with very different conceptions of the aims of sport, and these aims result in completely different ways of thinking of sport. 

Much like a rudder directs a boat, aims direct the uses to which a teacher’s/coach’s skills, knowledge and understanding are put.

As we have seen, aims can be framed in terms of social or individual outcomes.  This is not to suggest that there are only a small number possible aims!  On the contrary, the list of aims is probably endless  For example, an international review of the stated aims of educational systems from around the world came up with the following composite list (Tabberer, 1997):

• Excellence
•  Individual development
•  Social development
• Personal qualities
•  Equal opportunity
•  National economy
•  Preparation for work
•  Basic skills
•  Foundation for further education
•  Knowledge/skills/understanding
•  Citizenship/community/democracy
•  Cultural heritage/literacy
•  Creativity
•  Environment
•  Health/physical/leisure
•  Lifelong education
•   Parental participation

It would not be difficult to show how each of these can be translated into an aim for sport pedagogy (with a little imagination!).

It is worth noting that the list above was gleaned from curriculum documents.  Philosophically speaking, therefore, they represent what are called explicit aims.  These are aims that are stated for all to hear or published for all to read.  The moment a government or agency publishes the aims of a strategy or scheme they make them explicit, and consequently, open to discussion, criticism and rejection.

If aims are not made explicit they remain implicit, or hidden.  There is nothing sinister about this: implicit aims are not hidden to conceal.  Often, they are just too obvious to discuss.  Take as an example the question of mind-body dualism.  For many people (probably most people) the superiority of the mind over the body is simply taken for granted, and so any educational aims related to the development of the body will be inevitably be affected by this assumption.

One of the most valuable jobs that philosophy can offer is to help make implicit aims and assumptions explicit.  This is important because it is impossible to discuss, criticise and reject ideas until they are out in the open.  Lots of bad ideas grow and thrive only in the dark!

It is worthwhile examining both explicit and implicit aims because both will influence the way people act.  The explicit aims might reflect things like policies and formal guidance, and these are obviously relevant to teachers and coaches.  However, implicit aims are likely to reflect unquestioned assumptions and practices.  Our implicit aims will probably be more powerful precisely because we never question them.

So what?  Why does this talk of matter?

You may have already met Julie Myerson’s memoir ‘Not a Games Person’.  It is a frank account of a young woman who gradually changes from a general distain for sport and exercise to someone who hates them, largely due to her experiences at school.  At one point Myerson describes a lesson that might be familiar to many of us.

“This is me.  Six years old and standing in a sack in the middle of a field somewhere in the middle of England a long time ago.

 I don’t know why I’m here or what I’m doing – I don’t have any idea what the purpose is of standing in this field.  All I know is that they want me to jump – hold the sack as tight as I can and jump jump jump to the finishing line.

 I’m surrounded by people but all alone.  There’s a horrible feeling in my tummy and an itch on my leg, like a fly crawling over it.  I shiver and wait for the whistle to blow.”
(Julie Myerson, 2005, ‘Not a Games Person’)

We have no way of knowing the aims of Myerson’s teacher, but we can guess.  Perhaps the teacher felt that it was important for her pupils to get out of the classroom, to ‘burn off excess energy’.  Or maybe the motivation was competition (it was a sack race, after all).  Or perhaps her planning was inspired by the aim to make her children fitter and healthier.  Or was this lesson just an easy way to fill some time before the real business of school starts again?

Some of the teacher’s aims might be reasonable; others might seem weak or illegitimate.  In other words, different aims are of different value, and such value is only judged by making the aims explicit and by critically discussing them.

Strangers on a train You are on a train occasionally chatting to a charming person sitting opposite. Your new-found friend has just been reading an article in the newspaper that reports research findings that many children around the world have no regular sport or physical education lessons whilst at school. “Oh well”, your companion says innocently, “thank heavens it is only sport they are missing out”. You smile to yourself, and educate the stranger.



What do you say?

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Old farts and sexy skirts

The former England cricketer Ed Smith has claimed that sport is a condensed form of life, and it has a lot to teach us about 'the game of real life'. I suppose he is arguing that sport is like a model village that we can look at and study from different angles without getting run over. And in some ways he is right.

In other respects, though, sport is very different from real life. And nowhere is this difference more pronounced than in that strange land called sports administration.Administrators are the people who attend meetings, make rules and punish wrong-doers. They run their sports because nobody else has the time and inclination to do so.

Will Carling famously described the Rugby Football Union committee as "57 Old Farts", and was punished by losing his captaincy of the England team; a severity of punishment reserved for those who have unwisely and willfully stated the bleeding obvious. I have been told that things have changed a lot in recent years, but, now I think about it, my informant was a sports administrator. I have absolutely no doubt there are young, smart and forward-looking people, just as I have no doubt there are also ridiculous old farts smelling up the system.

Evidence?

One of the best-known examples of silly old men reveling the extent of their distance from normal, civilised life was Sett Blatter's suggestion a few years ago that women footballers wear sexier, tighter clothes: "Female players are pretty", he said. "Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball".

On another occasion, when asked about possible difficulties for gay people in Qatar, hosts of the 2022 World Cup, Blatter's advise was that gay fans "should refrain from any sexual activities".

Now, this is not the opinion of a random old man in a park; Blatter was (and still is) the President of the world body for football.

Boxing, not surprisingly, has its own old farts. Women's boxing first appeared in the Olympic Games at a demonstration sport in 1902, and a mere hundred and ten years later it will return in London. It is well-known that many of the old-guard of boxing are still horrified by the very idea of girls hitting each other, but their influence is clearly waning as women are showing themselves to be equal to their male counterparts in skill, fitness and heart.

Losing the argument on the grounds of boxing, the old farts have recently tried another angle. The AIBA, the world body for amateur boxing, which is ultimately responsible for the sport in the Olympics, has suggested that women boxers wear skirts to help them stand out from the men.

'Stand out from the men'? I think the AIBA is confusing elite athletes with Bangkok ladyboys. Why is it necessary for boxers to be obviously men or women? Surely the main criterion for their value is their boxing ability.

Or perhaps I am being naive. Some have suggested that the main motivation for this move is what we might call the 'Beach Volleyball Strategy'. In other words, the claim is that the AIBA wants to sex women's boxing up. This was, of course, Blatter's plan with football.

Is this marketing, 1950s style? Or are there more libidinous thoughts here? Frankly, I don't know. I do know that the suggestion is crass, and reveals a lack of confidence in women's boxing just as it is about to be properly launched into the world.

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Sport Science - good, bad and bogus

The sport sciences have garnered a huge body of evidence regarding the measurement and improvement of performance. Television programmes reporting on the preparation of elite players for events like the 2012 Olympic Games show them in laboratories, where scientists in lab coats connect them to tubes and cables and the ubiquitous machines that go 'ping'.

The scientific foundations of modern training and measurement are simply taken for granted by those involved in sport. Personally, I am not so sure.

Dave Collins (formerly Performance Director at UK Athletics and now Professor at the University of Central Lancashire) and I have recently written a paper for the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics called 'Scienciness' and the allure of second-hand strategy in talent identification and development. We argue that senior sports coaches and administrators are too quickly impressed by apparently 'sciency' looking strategies and practices which, on closer inspection, are really not very good science at all.

Of course, not all sport science is dodgy; the great majority is perfectly respectable. A problem, though, is that the people who actually use the research are rarely able to distinguish between good and bad science.

Without an understanding of science, most of us turn to good-old-fashioned common sense, which is probably a good bet most of the time, but occasionally is paradoxical and surprising and quite the opposite of common sense. And there are countless examples of bogus ideas in sport that seem common sensical; consider talent identification: the importance of spotting talent young; the need to identifying children with the correct body shape for specific sports; the necessity of focusing on one sport early. All of these ideas are widely believed to be true, because they seem like common sense. Yet they are all, more or less, nonsense.


One of the most fascinating examples of the battle between science and non-science is reported in Michael Lewis' Moneyball, which has just been released as a film starring .. [drum roll] .. Brad Pitt. The book / film focuses on Major League Baseball, possibly the most evidence-laden sport in the world, and its reliance on a combination of the wisdom of aged insiders and common sense-based, sciency statistics. According to Lewis, the statistics used by even the most elite teams to evaluate player success and, vitally, to identify the most talented recruits, were simply not relevant for the modern game.



Moneyball also tells of the remarkable success of the Oakland A's, a relatively poor team that somehow managed to compete successfully against much wealthier and established teams. Their secret? They used informed statistics to identify the real key predictors of playing success. So, while their opponents continued to assess players' potential and performance using common sense measures like batting averages, the A's turned to on-base percentages and slugging percentages. These scores were not only more valid predictors of playing success, but they also allowed the team to buy much more economically.

The events told in Moneyball took place some years ago, and the other Major League teams were forced to change, albeit reluctantly. It may be the new film will stimulate interest in the issue of good, bad and bogus sport science, and - who knows - perhaps it will contribute to the sport science education of coaches and administrators.

[A recent issue of the Financial Times has a fascinating discussion between Michael Lewis and Billy Beane, the man behind the A's statistical revolution]

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