Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Olympic fever hits Whitehall

Britain is doing well at the Olympics, lying third behind China and the USA so sports fever is the current vogue.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron has jumped on the bandwagon by saying he wants more sport in schools. More to the point, he wants competitive sports not the mamby pamby everyone is a winner and must get a prize stuff that was thrust on schools in the past.

Now there is a turn up for the books. I remember that schools were told that competition was a bad thing and that all children should be allowed to succeed. Sports days where children competed against each other were banned as being divisive. It seems that they may now make a return.

The Government has sold off paying fields to fund more important projects. The present government scrapped the successful School Sport Partnerships two years ago in a cost cutting exercise.  Now Cameron wants teachers to give up their free time to teach sports. Never mind technology and all that rubbish, lets have more soccer, rugby, tennis etc.  Next thing, there will be a whole scale revision of the curriculum and a drive to recruit more sports teachers.

Of course, when the Olympics are over and things settle down again, there will be a change of heart. There will be another bandwagon to jump onto and teachers will have to go through hoops to embrace the new fad that the government come up with. In the meantime, teachers in barmy Britain need to get their trainers out  and start practising for the new term in September.

No comments: