The average Year Nine pupil in an English boarding school spends 175 minutes a week on Maths. And about the same on English. This is a total of 350 minutes a week on what are generally regarded as the two most important academic subjects. Combined.
The same pupil spends an average of 400 minutes on compulsory PE and Games. Regardless of ability, aptitude or enthusiasm. It would be reasonable to assume from these figures that there is an important and undeniable benefit to all pupils from this level of participation. So what is it?
For some pupils, the preparation for high level competition in traditional team games will dominate this time. It will certainly lead to skilled performance, and a degree of competitive success. It may fill the trophy cabinet. But competitive success can only be available to half the participants, so that can't be what it is all about. How is the time used? Largely in skill learning, frequently in physical conditioning (though often of a very rudimentary, running-round-the-field-while-being-shouted-at type) and in the playing of games which are typically dominated by a small number of the most able players. Those players will usually be the ones who are the oldest in the year, have reached physical maturity earliest and have a long history of playing games in previous schools, at clubs or with enthusiastic parents
Experience of competition must be important. Schools deploy huge resources on competitive sports programmes, moving large numbers of pupils and staff around the country in expensive transport, to play on intensively prepared facilities, with the best of equipment, in the most modern kit, before benefiting from generous hospitality. But that can't be the most important benefit, because only a proportion of pupils take part in competition. And some of those do so unwillingly. So why do the rest have to make such an investment of time? What is the return on this investment?
If participation in games and physical activities is to justify its compulsory status, then surely its benefits must impact on all pupils, regardless of ability. Yet skill learning and competition are unequally distributed.
The Rugby School of Tom Brown's Schooldays was clear why boys played games. It was not to do with skill, or competitive results. It was for the moral impact they made on the character of the boys. The development of desirable physical qualities generically described as "manliness". A powerful cocktail of selflessness, courage, empathy, teamwork and resilience. Certainly if participation in games could develop these qualities, then the return on time invested would be undeniable and significant. Some schools would still claim to do this, though often as a consolation prize for a failure to achieve coveted competitive success. (Given the choice, which schools would opt for having resilient pupils ahead of seven girls winning a national Netball title?) But the real question is, how are these qualities developed, and where is the plan by which they are taught across the school? Sport is morally neutral. Mere participation is not enough to effect behaviour change. More people have learned cowardice from rugby than courage: more have learned selfishness from cricket than teamwork. It is all about how it is delivered. Yet rare is the school that has a concerted, planned, written policy for stimulating these qualities. Rare to the point of unique.
What else would justify 400 minutes of compulsion? Certainly, if this time impacted on levels of health and fitness or generated lifelong habits of exercise. In six hours every week, and with exceptional facilities, there should be world leading fitness levels and pupil obesity should be a thing of the past. Consigned to history along with the Plague.
Certainly, many pupils have high levels of fitness, and a very small number achieve unbelievable fitness levels. But how many schools could claim that every pupil could run a mile without stopping? Or swim 100m? Or ride a bike? Again the benefits are extremely variable, and unequally distributed in favour of the most able.
The implications of compulsory games are considerable. They create a responsibility for schools to establish a programme that has a clear, and lasting, benefit for all pupils. And yet the priorities suggest an obsession with establishing a high level of specific skill in a small range of games - and in a minority of pupils. And the only "results" that are measured, and dominate the websites, newspapers and speech days, are the number of goals, points and runs that are scored relative to random opposition. With the clear implication of a value system that recognises the competitive achievements of a small number of high performing pupils in team games.
Surely all that time could achieve something more significant than that?
