|
Game Plan: A Strategy for delivering the governments' sport and physical activity objectives, was jointly published by the government's Social Exclusion Unit and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport on December 19th, 2002.
Game Plan, as it is commonly known, was a landmark document in a variety of ways;
It was the first sport policy document authored by two government departments, the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) - as part of the "joined up thinking" philosophy that New Labour brought to government and the "crosscutting" political agenda that "social exclusion", in terms of the importance of Neighbourhood renewal, represented for the government - documented in the context of their cmnd paper "Bringing Britain Together".
Game Plan was larger and more comprehensive than any other recent "sport policy" documents, it sought to provide statistics and comment about sport participation and the inequalities associated with those and to provide a rationale for plans to reduce these inequalities.
Game Plan attempted to provide both a rationale and and action plan for the development of sport itself and the reduction of social exclusion through providing opportunities in sport participation based largely on the claims made for sport in the Report of the Social Exclusion Units' Policy Action Team 10. Game Plan made suggestions toward sport being a potential instrument in achievng the governments wider socio-political agenda of combating social exclusion.
Game plan articulated a clear statement that government perceived sport and physical activity as a potential social instrument to reduce the inequalities of opportunities for people (citizens) to participate in the social structures in British Society.
The subtext of Game Plan is that through sport and physical activity, a wider population that is often marginalised, could access better health, gain employment, be diverted from antisocial behaviour and be better educated (socialised) since "given its popularity and inherent properties sport can contribute to neighbourhood renewal" [the development of society] (PAT 10)
The instumental value of sport and physical activity to wider society is particularly prominent in Game Plan [sport & physical activity being percieved as an "instrument" that has the potential to address some of the problems in society], based on the claims for sport made in PAT 10 and the research by Collins et al, that underpinned it. At its most simplistic level Game Plan provides students with a plethora of statistics in terms of participation in sport and physical activity regarding a variety of groups in society (social / economic, ethnic, gender, disability, age etc.) whist at a more sophisticated level sets the sport development practice and academic agenda toward sport and physical activity's potentials in the combating of social exclusion.
Performance sport and the attracting of large events are perhaps the weakest chapters in the plan, both clearly taking second place in the wider agendas. The development of performance sport being characterised as having only a "feel good" influence to wider society and the value of sporting role models as having a mixed influence in British society. Additionally, and pointing to the lack of importance given to these sections the preferred model of performance development in sport is suggested as the Long Term Athlete Development model (Balyi, 1990 - 2004) which has little evidentiary basis (or scientific actually), it has never been academically published (and by inference never has been peer reviewed, its reliability and validity is therefore left to doubt)
Game Plan concentrates on the social value of sport participation, the interrogation of the value of sport performance chapters in Game Plan appear, to us at least, to be somewhat less committed in terms of performance sports' value to society. It may be that in the future that the two areas (contested definitions of sport development) will command separate policy documents since the domain assumptions that underpin each are different in principal yet related conceptually, some would say that competitive sport and community sports participation are pole opposite at a domain / purpose level, the former being based at a fundamental level, in inequality, the latter based in equality. If sport is a social construct, on the one hand - winners and losers - on the other a mechanism to address inequalities, the question remains....... can the conditions of sport be manipulated to serve two masters?
Make your own judgement, click here to download Game Plan
Other relevant Rough Guides;
|
