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The mid 1990's saw a sea change in school education in the United Kingdom, the various developments in terms of the National curriculum and particularly the education reform act (ERA) changed the way in which schools in the UK operated. Impacts were felt across state school provision which included physical education.
The trend toward the development of schools with "specialisms" starting under the Conservatives were, in 1997 continued by the newly elected Labour government in the form of "Specialist Sports Colleges" connected to their feeder primary schools and other secondary provision via the programme called "school sports co-ordinators" (SSCos). (students should also be cognisant of the impact of the conservative 'Raising the Game' sport policy document, as detailing some of the potentials of physical education and sport development provision)
The Specialist Sports Colleges and School Sports Co-ordinators initiatives were originally conceived as developing wider opportunities in some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK (see Bringing Britain Together, A Sporting Future for All, PAT 10, Game Plan etc.) as part of New Labour's crosscutting 'social inclusion' agenda.
A Specialist Sports College is a maintained secondary school (in England) which receives additional funding from the Department for Education and Skills to raise standards in physical education and sport within its own school, in a local family of schools and in the wider community.
Schools may apply for Sports College status by raising £50,000 of private sector sponsorship and submitting to the DfES a four year development plan showing how it will raise standards in PE and sport.
Sports Colleges are one of eight categories of specialist school in the Government's Specialist Schools Programme.
In return for a sponsors contribution of 50,000 (reduced in particular areas of multiple deprivation), the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) provides a capital grant of £100,000 for this school which, combined with sponsorship, allows for a capital project of at least £150,000 (more if sponsorship is greater).
Schools applying for Sports College status may also be eligible to apply for Lottery funding of up to £2 million to improve their facilities for PE and sport.
Specialist schools also receive an additional per capita annual grant of 123 per pupil, equivalent for the average size school of 1,000 pupils of 123,000 a year, which may be used for additional staff, materials, in-service training, equipment replacement or out reach work. This funding is available for an initial period of four years (subject to a review of progress in year two).
Both initiatives have grown exponentially, expanded further than just deprived areas and attracting increasing amounts of both exchequer and lottery funding, the School Sports Co-ordinator programme particularly has been developed (in scale at least) to have become a new tier in PE teacher provision having national conferences and, in effect, its own lead body in the form of the Youth Sports Trust.
- · The School Sport Co-ordinator Programme was launched – by the Department for Education and Skills and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – in September 2000. The programme brings together families of schools to help deliver for pupils a two hour entitlement, per week, to high quality physical education (PE) and school sport within and beyond the curriculum.
The programme has six strategic aims and objectives:
- raising standards – supporting schools to review and develop their PE and school sport programmes to enhance the quality of provision;
- strategic planning – enhancing PE and sports development through development plans;
- primary liaison – establishing and developing PE and sports programmes for primary and special schools (particularly targeting the Key Stage 2/3 interface);
- school to community – building and supporting school/club links;
- out-of-school-hours activity – developing and supporting out-of-school-hours sports programmes (including inter and intra school competitions); and
- coaching and leadership – developing leadership, coaching and officiating programmes to help pupils gain skills to enhance their future role with the sporting community.
The Local Education Authority (LEA) identifies an experienced teacher, normally within a Specialist Sports College (SpSC) to support and manage the development of local school sports partnerships. The teacher is taken off teaching timetable for(normally) 2 days per week and is known as the Partnership Development Manager (PDM) each PDM works with 4 to 6 partner Secondary schools (depending on local circumstances) and within each of these an experienced teacher co-ordinates and drives the development in the school and an associated family of primary schools. The teacher is taken off teaching for 2 or 3 days per week and is known as the School Sport Co-ordinator (SSCo) each SSCo works with up to 5 Primary schools and within each of these schools an experienced teacher ensures that the programmes are planned and delivered and that links are built with other schools and organisations across the partnership area. This teacher is taken off the teaching timetable for approximately 12 days per year and is known as a Primary Link Teacher (PLT)
The School Sports Co-ordinator initiative, now principally based in Specialist Sports Colleges (although this was not the only model) aims to develop the quality of delivery of physical education in schools and particularly the links between key stages 2 and 3 (the gap between primary and secondary provision) in addition to achieving the government's target of two (2) hours of PE for every child per week (75% by 2006 - currently about 42%). The links made by Programme Development Managers (PDMs) and School Sports Co-ordinators with Primary link teachers are designed to achieve these targets. It is curious, however, that the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) appears unmotivated to take on the 2004 example from Scotland and do the job properly by placing specialist PE Teachers in every primary school (see this BBC link for information)
In addition Specialist Sports Colleges and School Sport Co-ordinator programmes are charged with developing 'community' links (the former also charged with developing further and higher education links too.), yet what 'community' represents to schools may not be those communities that traditional sport development defines.
These school / club / wider community links, stem from the 1960 report of Wolfenden "Sport in the Community", schools opening their doors to a wider population than their own pupils and school partnerships. These wider community links have provided fertile ground for the County Sports Partnerships (under their initial remit of active sports & school/club links) and Local Authority Sport Development Units, hitherto almost excluded from the young sport talent base that schools potentially provided, other than in dual-use, joint-provision and the public school sports facilities and systems.
Often schools' perceive their community as their feeder primary schools and their secondary partners (school sports partnerships) - vastly different from those perceptions of community in sport development and sport performance. The educational domain assumptions that underpin Physical Education (where the conditions of PE are adapted to suit the child) are different from those of sport (where the child is shaped to the conditions required for the sport). Some would argue that PE & Sport have differing educational domain assumptions and are, as a consequence, sometimes incompatible. Mixing the two may mean that such a sport educational model may lack construct validity.
The various claims for the value of sport in educational settings are as old as the British Empire itself (and not unrelated) ranging from that famous [miss] quotation attributed to the Duke of Wellington in 1815 that "the battle of Waterloo was won..... on the playing fields of Eton" to those various claims made in recent policy documents including Game Plan (2002). In summary the positional statements are that sport might contribute - in an educational context - to;
- Enhancing [wider] educational attainment
- Developing psychological traits (self-esteem etc.)
- Enhancing social responsibility
- Developing moral responsibility
- Developing interpersonal skills
- Developing lifelong [positive] health behaviours
- Encouraging social conformity (& behaviour)
- Developing employment key skills (teamwork etc.)
- Reducing childhood obesity (6% at present)
- Combating adolescent depression
- (this list is not exhaustive)
What may be interesting to students is the range of claims made, some seated in evidence of various quality but all clearly representative of that age old PE and Sport tradition of the notion that "Sport is great?"
Evidence
Other than simple physiology, the evidence base for these claims is various and contested at best given the variety of factors that influence the development of a person and their behaviours.
In terms of educational attainment ( a cornerstone of specialist sports colleges) students may wish to further interrogate the works of Dawn Penny based on PE as a "connective specialism" and those related to "motivational climate" in PE developing motivational learning theory in terms of 'significant others', 'behaviour management' and 'motivational climates' (a google scholar search will reveal Penny's work and a variety of others.)
The physiology and lifelong learning issues are well developed by principal academics in the area such as Ken Fox at Bristol. (google scholar again!)
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