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Great article ...... and I hope and pray for the U-turn!

As the Partnership Headteacher of two North Norfolk Primary Schools, I am delighted that North Norfolk Schools Sports Partnership has given ALL children the opportunity to develop skills in a range of sports - Rugby, Netball/Basketball, Hockey, Cricket, Soccer, Tennis, Athletics, Golf, Archery, Fencing, Speed Stacking, Dance and Cheerleading. They have also given the pupils the chance to compete at cluster, district and county levels.

Such input is needed if we are to have that Olympic Legacy that we ALL desire!

School sport, if not died, became chronically ill with the teacher's industrial action in the 1980s. Children's sport is now run by clubs outside of the school. It is time we recognised this fact and diverted resources in their direction. I don't want funding cut but put where it will do the most good.

Does it really matter ?..it's pretty clear that the old East German model is the one being followed where the medal count is everything and nothing else matters. Besides the products of private schools , er , "box above their weight " as the not so old British expression puts it.

Revealing - and disappointing - that there are so few comments on this.

The Government attitude - that this is something to do with lack of competition - is so inaccurate, that it shows how little they actually know about it.

Or could it simply be that they are keen to perform a populist 'turnaround' to show that they are prepared to respond positively to public criticism?

After being born and educated in Oxford and now residing in South Africa after a period in Australia I can say quite unquestionably that when it comes to sports in schools the UK is in the dark ages. For example I never ever picked up a cricket bat at school, could not play rugby or hockey in school and PE was quite simply taken as a joke and looked upon as a "free period" in fact the soccer coach was actually the Geography teacher. The only sport that we could really play was basket ball.

Compare this with SA and Aus.... In Cape Town the three closest schools to where I live have a combined 20 cricket pitches, in winter these make up close on 25 rugby and soccer fields, on each and every afternoon and Saturday there are inter school games going on supported by parents and other students. These schools between them in cricket have producted Jon Trott, Paul Harris, Herchelle Gibbs, Gary Kirsten, Jaques Kallis and many many others. This is not an exception this is the norm! There is also the possibility to represent your school at Provincial Champs and then if you win here your Province at National Champs and there is huge pride in this.

Honestly if the UK wants to have a legacy in sports post 2012 they need to have a hard hard look at the systems in SA, USA, Aus because quite simply the school sports systems in all three makes the UK's look like a 3rd world country and unless changes are made things will only get worse.

Oh and guess where my kids are being schooled???? Right here in SA so that they can have the opportunities that I didn't

5 dan-edwards

curious post-you do realise that this is an Olympics blog don't you ?
Yes those posh schools in Sth Africa sure have great sporting facilities as well as ( to Brits ) very reasonable fees and have proved to be a wonderful nursery for,er, English cricket ...but they cater for maybe 2% of schoolchildren in Sth Africa. I'm sure their equivalents in the UK have great facilities too
This is an Olympics blog and Sth Africa's perfomance at the last Summer Olympics was only marginally better than their performance at the last Winter Olympics viz one siver medal against no medals...so I guess it's sensible for you to confine yourself to cricket where Sth Africa is one of about 6 countries ( out of 8 ) all clustered together who could all beat one another on any particular day

A schools Olympics will mean nothing if children don't play sport on a weekly basis throughout the year.

I also think it's a reality that non-competitive exercise is a perfectly reasonable life choice for some. Particularly if they're not that gifted at sport or simply aren't obsessed by it. From a medical point of view, the exercise is more important than the competition. Whether from the financial point of view, competition is necessary, you'd better ask others.

There's a subset of children who want to compete all the time at anything. They are quite a minority, I think you'll find.

There are others who want to compete when their skill level is sufficient to make the competition interesting. I and many I knew were like that.

There are some who need the right format to want to compete. For some it's individual, for others it's partnership, for others its team based.

There are some who aren't comfortable with contact sports. Fine, let them be. You don't need to face the Mayor of London in a rugby scrum to call him terrible names, you know.......

But if you don't let children find out through regular playing, coaching and practicing where in the pantheon of sporting activities their talents and temperaments lie, then you won't create a generation of sports participants.

So if you're getting rid of SSPs, you'd better have a 52 week alternative lined up and a jolly good reason to blow hundreds of thousands, if not millions, shutting the old thing down and starting the new one up.

Political spite isn't a jolly good reason...........

This from the country that got only three gold medals in both athens and beijing? and the tally per capita gets a lot worse. significantly less that other winter sports nations (if you want to use that argument).

At the end of the day, the Canadian OC may have a good point but that doens't give them the right to stick their noses in other people's business.