A fortnight round-up:
- Apparently, the state of our country is so dull the BBC decide that both the state of American politics and weather are more important than something Nick Clegg said, and so in the morning I had to wait until the third news story before I actually heard about something that happened in Britain.
- Nick Clegg said something unimportant about tax, which doesn't affect me as I don't earn anything.
- Burma took loads of people off their blacklist
- Mitt Romney says so many stupid things I'm happy he's not running for PM in the UK
- Exam boards ruin children's future
- Lack of communication with my school means I don't know my results until the beginning of term
- Everybody buys Paralympic tickets before me :(
But today, I shall talk about statistics, sports and schools.
After the Olympics, in which Team GB won more or less everything when it came to cycling (the general consensus is that Rio shouldn't bother building a velodrome and just give us all the golds for cycling instead), the government needed to think how to build a legacy after hosting the Games, a promise which awarded the city the Games in the first place. And so, discussion of sport provisions in schools was brought up.
This is where Gove and I differ (as is the case on many education issues). He believes that, in order to get kids into sport, the minimum amount required is an hour per day. Per day! I agree that's good for personal fitness, but it has no place in schools. The average (state) secondary school has a six hour day. Five one-hour lessons and an hour of break (although I do know one school in the South East that does two three-hour lessons a day instead). Within a week, currently, two hours of sport are squeezed in. And in the GCSE years, few people ever participate in these two hours anyway, at least that's what the situation is for the two lower-set groups in my year. I'm a lower set, and whilst I don't fake notes, I haven't done full-blown participation all year either (I missed about a week of lessons to paint a flag, of all things). We're a sports college (apparently one of the first sixteen in the country), and so you'd expect the school to do something to tackle the fact that very little participation happens in the upper years both in general PE and on the sports day. But no, they cease to care past your third year. What they do care about, however, is the few groups that go to other schools and play. It makes them look good on paper, to the cost of most of the students.
What we need is a better variety of sport. If you're bad at a sport, you'll dislike it. If you dislike it, you're disinclined to play it. In my last school, I had to play rounders (Google it if you don't know. It's a little bit like softball) all day, every day for quite a few weeks during my final term. Of course, now I know how to play rounders, and so do many of my old schoolmates, but it doesn't mean we like it. We still groan and put little effort into each game. More hours of sport won't change that. The sports I choose to do are fencing, kayaking and snowboarding. I'm not a fast runner, particularly good field athelete nor can I swim very well. According to my school, I'm not a very sporty person. The only reason I ever managed to access those sports was due to enough personal drive to actually want to do something. I'll be honest, I'm not the greatest at any of the three, but I enjoy them enough to search out for clubs and opportunities to play them. If a student looks to be failing or disinclined to play in the sports the school has on offer, then maybe they'd enjoy an alternative sports. That way, everyone gets a chance to find something they like. And obviously, every school in the country won't have the opportunity to ferry multiple children here, there and everywhere weekly to do each and every sport that they excel it, but there can be compromises. If someone shows they participate in a club outside of school, and it's not a sport the school offers, then why not allow a child out of one lesson a week, or allow them to practise that sport within the lesson (if possible). There, you've got everybody involved in sport for two hours a week.
Making someone do something they dislike over and over won't make them enjoy it, however letting them do something they enjoy once will make them do it over and over.
- Apparently, the state of our country is so dull the BBC decide that both the state of American politics and weather are more important than something Nick Clegg said, and so in the morning I had to wait until the third news story before I actually heard about something that happened in Britain.
- Nick Clegg said something unimportant about tax, which doesn't affect me as I don't earn anything.
- Burma took loads of people off their blacklist
- Mitt Romney says so many stupid things I'm happy he's not running for PM in the UK
- Exam boards ruin children's future
- Lack of communication with my school means I don't know my results until the beginning of term
- Everybody buys Paralympic tickets before me :(
But today, I shall talk about statistics, sports and schools.
After the Olympics, in which Team GB won more or less everything when it came to cycling (the general consensus is that Rio shouldn't bother building a velodrome and just give us all the golds for cycling instead), the government needed to think how to build a legacy after hosting the Games, a promise which awarded the city the Games in the first place. And so, discussion of sport provisions in schools was brought up.
This is where Gove and I differ (as is the case on many education issues). He believes that, in order to get kids into sport, the minimum amount required is an hour per day. Per day! I agree that's good for personal fitness, but it has no place in schools. The average (state) secondary school has a six hour day. Five one-hour lessons and an hour of break (although I do know one school in the South East that does two three-hour lessons a day instead). Within a week, currently, two hours of sport are squeezed in. And in the GCSE years, few people ever participate in these two hours anyway, at least that's what the situation is for the two lower-set groups in my year. I'm a lower set, and whilst I don't fake notes, I haven't done full-blown participation all year either (I missed about a week of lessons to paint a flag, of all things). We're a sports college (apparently one of the first sixteen in the country), and so you'd expect the school to do something to tackle the fact that very little participation happens in the upper years both in general PE and on the sports day. But no, they cease to care past your third year. What they do care about, however, is the few groups that go to other schools and play. It makes them look good on paper, to the cost of most of the students.
What we need is a better variety of sport. If you're bad at a sport, you'll dislike it. If you dislike it, you're disinclined to play it. In my last school, I had to play rounders (Google it if you don't know. It's a little bit like softball) all day, every day for quite a few weeks during my final term. Of course, now I know how to play rounders, and so do many of my old schoolmates, but it doesn't mean we like it. We still groan and put little effort into each game. More hours of sport won't change that. The sports I choose to do are fencing, kayaking and snowboarding. I'm not a fast runner, particularly good field athelete nor can I swim very well. According to my school, I'm not a very sporty person. The only reason I ever managed to access those sports was due to enough personal drive to actually want to do something. I'll be honest, I'm not the greatest at any of the three, but I enjoy them enough to search out for clubs and opportunities to play them. If a student looks to be failing or disinclined to play in the sports the school has on offer, then maybe they'd enjoy an alternative sports. That way, everyone gets a chance to find something they like. And obviously, every school in the country won't have the opportunity to ferry multiple children here, there and everywhere weekly to do each and every sport that they excel it, but there can be compromises. If someone shows they participate in a club outside of school, and it's not a sport the school offers, then why not allow a child out of one lesson a week, or allow them to practise that sport within the lesson (if possible). There, you've got everybody involved in sport for two hours a week.
Making someone do something they dislike over and over won't make them enjoy it, however letting them do something they enjoy once will make them do it over and over.
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