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The Inverted Economics of Independent School Sport

Posted Thursday, 6 December 2018

Provision for high performance in school sport has never been more extensive, or of higher quality. There are more staff, more specialist coaches, conditioners, analysts and physiotherapists than ever before. This has led to an increase in training times, individual programmes, one to one sessions and visits from a glittering...

How Good do you Want the Opposition to be?

Posted Friday, 16 November 2018

School sport needs opponents. Programmes of competitive activities require other teams - whether they are houses, schools, counties or countries. We feel that we need to compete against them. The word suggests that. But mostly we need to compete with them. There is a subtle, but significant, difference. Elite competition...

What does Sport for All really mean?

Posted Friday, 12 October 2018

In the 1970s, the then Sports Council came up with a number of campaigns designed to improve levels of physical activity within various groups in society. The laudable generic title was ‘Sport for All’. Few things have survived intact from the era of long hair and flared trousers, but this...

Why does a School need a Director of Sport?

Posted Friday, 28 September 2018

The Director of Sport is a relatively new role in schools. Twenty five years ago, fewer than a handful of schools had a position of this title. Now everyone has one. Many Heads report that this is the most difficult position to appoint to, because – unlike other subjects -...

The Sport facilities arms race- building the field of dreams?

Posted Thursday, 27 September 2018

"To be or not to be" or more appropriately in our case, "if you build it, they will come" Vs "if you build it, WILL they come?" While it is can be an enormous drain on Independent schools' financial resources that arguably could be better utilised on bursaries for less...

The Summer Term Needs a New Girls' Sport

Posted Friday, 15 June 2018

There never was an equivalent of Cricket for girls. A game that occupied almost everyone at different levels of ability and formed the bulk of the competitive programme. Cricket occupied that role for over a hundred years in boys’ schools, and part of the legacy of its current declining popularity...