Can a School have a Coaching Philosophy?

One of the priorities for any custodian of sport in a school is the difficult issue of quality control.  With anywhere between half a dozen and a hundred coaches delivering sessions within a programme, ensuring that they are all of a minimum standard is certainly a challenge.

Is it therefore possible for a school to adopt a consistency of approach that goes across all sports, all age groups, both sexes and all ability levels?  Would there be any value in this, or would it simply emasculate the creative capacity of individual coaches, and apply a restrictive influence on what they do?  Would they welcome this shared framework, with its implied collegiality of best practice - or simply resent, and maybe ignore, this Big Brother style interference in their autonomy?

What would a coaching philosophy address? Here are some possible considerations:

Entitlement.  There exists a considerable correlation, in many schools, between the quality of the games learning experience and ability in games.  The best players may get the best sessions, with the best coaches, on the best pitches with the newest equipment in the most favourable coaching ratios.  The groups may have names - formal or otherwise - that suggest that some are institutionally more important than others. In a team based session, those on the fringes may be relegated to peripheral roles, typically in defence - or holding a tackle shield in rugby, fielding in cricket etc.

If a school believes that the quality of games experience of all pupils should not be dependent upon ability, then this would have a significant impact on the structure of games delivery. This is not the same as advocating mixed ability - or even mixed sex - groupings, but simply a commitment to both quality and equality.  It assumes that someone cares about something other than the performance of teams in school matches.

Engagement.  How do sessions start? Run around the field/court? Static stretching? Recent research with professional sportspeople revealed that they found warm up one of the most tedious aspects of their job.  Is it not likely that children will feel the same? Can the session not achieve the same physiological outcomes with a different manner of delivery?  Using activities that are engaging, which almost always means using a ball? Research in schools establishes that spending the first ten minutes of a 75 minute session on intensive ball activity in a relatively unstructured fashion triples the number of touches that a player has with the ball. If you believe that skill, and motivation, develop in proportion to the amount of time spent with the ball, then it would be logical to assume that a school which required all its sessions - in all sports - to begin that way, would be more effective in a number of ways.

Child based or coach centred? Do you believe that children learn by doing or listening?  The answer to this question will have a big impact on the way in which a school requires its teachers to deliver games.  Research in prep schools indicates that pupils spend an average of 18 minutes of a 75 minute sessions involved in games, or specific skill learning.  This compares unfavourably with up to 40 minutes of coach talk.  Ask a pupil who is off games to run a stop watch on the level of coach talk in any session or lesson, and compare results.

How much of Games is games? It says "Games" on the timetable.  Does it mean that? Or does it mean running round the field followed by weaving a pre determined route through a labyrinth of coloured cones? Why do pupils ask "Can we have a game, Sir?"  How many pupils take part in skill drills with a smile on a red face?

Games have the capacity to inspire joy, activity and other moral qualities.  It would therefore be logical to think that games should be a major component of "Games" lessons.  In harnessing the power of play, and the enthusiasm that many children have for it, the teacher has the best chance of making lessons stimulating and enjoyable.  A suggestion for inclusion in any school's coaching philosophy would be a simple principle that,  "50% of Games is games".  Would that be controversial?

A coaching philosophy offers an answer to the difficult question of how a school presents plans for skill learning. A conventional Scheme of Work isn't very satisfactory in games, where learning is not sequential.  All aspects of a game (passing, shooting, moving with the ball, defending) have to happen at the same time for it to work: the emphasis can vary from week to week, but a learning prescription, laid down in advance, cannot be the best way.  Neither can it respond to changed rates of learning, nor what happened to the team on Saturday. Where it is done like this, it is usually because a school requires games to provide evidence of planning in the same format as other subjects.

How does a coaching philosophy interact with a playing philosophy?  The former is an approach to delivery that goes across all areas.  The latter are sport specific strategies that might focus on particular technical or tactical emphases, limited to that game. The coaching philosophy is about the way that the learning experience is presented. 

So the final question is this:  what is the real role of the Director of Sport?  Is it to ensure that all pupils and staff are at the right place, at the right time, in the right kit and with the right equipment? And that the opposition turns up when and where we expect it to?  If this is the purpose of the job, there would be little to choose between the best and the worst exponents.

Or is the real job to control the quality of what happens at those times when all are gathered together for "Games"?