The Spring Term has always been an uninspiring time for school sport. Dark nights, cold and wet weather, frosty mornings and mock exams. It has always been a season demanding dogged persistence from teachers and coaches and anticipating better times ahead. Those better times used to be the Summer Term – long, sunny days accompanied by the more relaxed pace of Cricket, Athletics and Tennis. After a miserable British winter, this can finally provide a climate conducive to sport for an energised population of staff and pupils. It reinforces the conviction that school sport really is solar-powered.

However, the...

School sport requires a significant workforce to ensure a vibrant co-curricular provision. The historic assumption of staff contribution based upon goodwill and generous discretionary effort is in terminal decline. There are pockets of good health, but the general trend is a downwards one. This results partly from changing attitudes to what constitutes reasonable overall demands of the job and partly from perception of fairness. Activities with a high expectation of time commitment, especially those that take place at weekends and in holidays, are under greatest pressure. The business case of independent education depends heavily on the richness of its opportunities...

School sport requires a significant workforce to ensure a vibrant co-curricular provision. The historic assumption of staff contribution based upon goodwill and generous discretionary effort is in terminal decline. There are pockets of good health, but the general trend is a downwards one. This results partly from changing attitudes to what constitutes reasonable overall demands of the job and partly from perception of fairness. Activities with a high expectation of time commitment, especially those that take place at weekends and in holidays, are under greatest pressure. The business case of independent education depends heavily on the richness of its opportunities...