6/19/24, 8:40 AM Does competitive sport in school do more harm than good?

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PE and school sport

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Does competitive sport in school do more harm than good?

With so much of the curriculum already target driven, journalist
Matthew Jenkin questions whether the incentive to win in PE is
either necessary or effective

Matthew Jenkin
Thu 29 Jan 2015 07.00 GMT

D
ouble Olympic champion Mo Farah’s athletic talent was spotted at an early age by his physical education teacher at
Feltham community college in west London. Alan Watkinson was instrumental in channelling Farah’s energies into
athletics and says this also helped the young athlete focus on his studies.

But not everyone shares Watkinson’s enthusiasm for competitive sports, least of all students. According to a survey by
Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the Chance to Shine charity, almost two thirds (64%) of eight to 16-year-olds said they would
be “relieved, not bothered or happier” if winning or losing were not a factor.

Childhood obesity is worryingly high in Britain and it’s hard to find an argument against the need for students to engage in
strenuous physical activity during physical education (PE) lessons. But with so much of the curriculum already fiercely target
driven, why must these sessions include an element of competition?

The incentive to win gives students the motivation for taking part in the physical activity or games, says Chris Tully, head of PE at
a secondary school in west Yorkshire. It’s a belief shared by 22% of parents, questioned in the survey above, who said they would
have less interest in watching school sport if it was not competitive.

While Tully sympathises with children who may have less interest in or talent for sport, the answer is not to abolish the
competitive element but to apply a more tailored approach to teaching according to each student’s needs.

He explains: “Some children are more introverted and less inclined to want to compete. That doesn’t mean, however, that we
should just sit back and let them opt out. There should be careful management to encourage them into some element of
competition.”

At Tully’s school, teachers make sure students are matched appropriately and fairly to activities and competitors according to
ability. The result is that no girl or boy plays against a peer who is much more physically developed or experienced. It wouldn’t be
beneficial for either pupil, he says.

Students are allowed to choose activities that suit them, whether it is team games such as football, netball and hockey or fitness-
based things such as boxercise or circuit training. They also offer more creative options such as gymnastics, dance and
trampolining.

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The competition element, however, does not always involve going up against peers. Tully is keen to encourage the idea of
personal bests, asking students to reflect on their own performance and how well they did in this lesson compared to the last.
Making comparisons with others can be demotivating for some pupils.

Gareth Hamer, a PE and maths teacher at Stourport high school and sixth form in Worcestershire, agrees that competition is
healthy. He adds that physical education has the ability to offer so much more than the experience of winning and losing.
Lessons also look at technical, physical, social and psychological aspects.

Competitive sports, Hamer says, can teach you how to keep your temper and how to respect others: “It helps students become
good people who can contribute to the community in a variety of ways, whether that is in leadership roles or supporting others.
PE is obviously not the sole contributor to these skills, but it is definitely something that can bring all of those qualities out.”

The key is helping pupils understand why they are playing a particular sport. Students need to understand the point of what they
are doing and the value of the lesson. Competition, Hamer insists, is a crucial element in every adult life, whether it’s going for a
job or buying a house.

Young people need to know what it’s like to succeed, but equally how it feels to fail. Jon Clack, headteacher at Great Ponton
primary, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, set up a charity called Inspire Plus to encourage sport in his small rural school and the local
community after the government cut its school sports partnership funding. Since then he has been working to ensure PE is a
bigger priority.

He recently started a football club and invited children as young as six or seven up to the age of 11 to join. Instead of the older
students using it as an opportunity to show off and the younger children crumbling under the weight of failure, he says, the more
mature players showed a genuine concern for their junior peers – supporting them and helping them enjoy a fair game.

Failure, Clack reveals, is almost an expectation at his school of just 70 pupils. If you are playing in external competitions against
teams which have been chosen from a much wider pool of talent, there is a strong possibility of losing. It’s therefore important
that the students set themselves their own individual goals, such as aiming to score at least one goal. Clack says the students
recognise that failing is a fact of life and so they see it as a learning experience.

“A little bit of failure is good for you,” says Clack. “In every lesson it is better to give a wrong answer rather than nothing at all. In
PE, everyone has to have a go. Competitive sports helps students learn what can go right or wrong and arms them with tactics
that they can use to do better in the future.”

He adds that it doesn’t matter about your age or your skill, competitive sports give students the opportunity to explore the
standard of their skill versus others’ because many are much better than they think.

“The key thing is developing the whole child who is prepared for life and work,” Clack says. “Win, lose or draw – your life will
never pan out like you expect it to, so you need to be prepared.”

The PE and school sports series is funded by the Youth Sport Trust. All content is editorially
independent except for pieces labelled “brought to you by”. Find out more here.

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RonnieRadford 5 Feb 2015 17.36 0

Playing devil's advocate here, but surely the arguments being used against Competitive Sport could be used against other subjects? Many children
have a thoroughly miserable time learning Maths, for example. We could argue they change the curriculum to more functional things they enjoy
and will definitely need for later life as opposed to the majority of the curriculum that they will never use.

Obviously the flip side is that this prejudices the curriculum against those who are good at and enjoy the more difficult elements of Maths and that
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