and why was the policy of playing to win fine up to the last 20 odd years? we have won world cups in football and RL with this policy?
to me it's because kids today have so much more to do. we played sports every waking hour. you must read jimmy greaves autobiography where he describes playing with tennis balls in the street and convinced its where he honed his skills. brazilians play for hours still on the beach and it hasn't done them any harm

seth.. i am sorry you're losing your job, but reading various letters from Baroness Campbell and The Sec of State, the "RING fenced" funding for school sports partnerships is being removed.
The money will still be available to schools but this is where the kids could lose out. If you have a sports minded head teacher then the current sports activities will continue, however if the head is a sports hater then they are liable to reallocate the money to other school items (computers, chairs, etc etc). The government is laying all the decision making on the head teachers.

Forgive me if i have read this wrong

Been a goal keeper on hard concrete certainly taught me to stop been a big wuss. In fact it was my goal keeping that won my form second place out of four in school inter-form championships . Such a shame that the team that finished top had a striker.

I don't think I've ever come across a policy of having to tell everyone they are equal and no one is better.
In fact, the current thinking is that training needs to move away from drills, and more towards mini-games....to tap into that competiveness we all have.
But in doing that, get away from playing lots of matches, which lead to team training being focussed on winning the next match.

Because the rest of the world was equally backwards in their training methods. They moved forwards, whilst we stood still with the methods that once gave us a narrow win in the soccer WC, when it was played at home.

You're right about playing the game though. Hence the move of training away from drills to games. Playing games is fine. It's when you've got a league structure of a ton of matches ahead, training gets shifted to prepping for one game at a time and winning that game.

A couple of misguided bits of information from the coalition-

the money does not exist anymore, ringfenced or otherwise, it's gone from the school budget completely.

Michael gove is trying to hang the ssp's with this 2 in 5 figure (when he said 1 he misquoted himself!) this relates to regular competition which translates to a child competing 12 times at least in a year, a rediculous goal which should never have been set, children doing 11 who access school club links in the community would not count.

However politicians always interprate the figures to suit their agenda as we know, as not once have they consulted the Youth Sport Trust and Sue Campbell nor have they visited a school sport partnership.

450 partnerships nationally cost 160million a year, peanuts in comparison to the national debt, and what will also cost the nation in future through poor health and crime etc, prevention is better than the cure.

An SSP consists of a development manager, competition manager, a school sport coordinator in each high school (usually 7) for 2 days a week and a pe coordinator in each primary (usually up to 50 per SSP) released 12 days a year to provide opportunities and transition work with the high school.

Ssp's have seen the 25% of children doing 2hrs of PE a week rise to 90% in 5 years, schools who are judged almost soley on maths and English results by Ofsted will increase these subject lessons to the detrement of pe.

The highest improvements in academic attainment are Sports Colleges, as sport improves this along with the agendas mentioned earlier.

Millions more children are active in a sport for all plan we now have, hundreds of thousands of young people are sports leaders, competions now extend to national levels in a wider number of sports, gifted and talented programme run, coaching nutrition education....the list goes on.

These things will not happen when the funding is cut, it doesn't take a genious to realise the impact of that on so many social agendas.

This is not just opinion and manipulating figures like a politician, I have worked in sport development for 10 years, coach on Leeds scholarship, club level and service area and seen the impact on young children this has.

If my job goes but the partnerships stay I'll be happy, as I believe fully in what we have achieved. This isn't about my job.

A couple of fundamentals:

Sport in School is very important (competitive or otherwise) as it gives kids exercise, discipline and structure.

Reduction in Expenditure has got to be made, the Country as a whole is living beyond its means.

How you rationalise the two is a bit beyond me, although there must be areas where we can reduce spending without necessarily compromising quality too much.

Here's a radical idea, why dont we ask the people doing the job how we could improve the output for less cost?

Exactly right Batley, we accept the fact that cuts were going to be made, but not to be scrapped completely. And we were not consulted.

I could give a number of senarios where we could cut funding, possibly half it, the impact wouldn't be the same but many projects could continue to run.

I can't begin to a full picture of the impact ssp's have made on here, but the national petition was started by a 16 year old sports leader, who writes that sport made her confident and changed her as a person, as Nelson Mandela said 'sport has the power to change lives'. the millions signing the petition certainly care.

And there you have it. Our school sports teams were run by the PE teachers, various interested teachers who gave up a couple of hours of their spare time, and the school janitor! In fact the jani's team, which he was in charge of from Under 12 through to Under 16, were one of the most successful football teams in the history of the school.

No SSP...no partnerships...no £160 million budget, just ordinary people with an interest in promoting sporting excellence in the kids at their school.

All a far cry from the headmaster at my son's school 15 years ago, when I asked him why there was no sports day, replied...."Competitive games mean that for every winner there has to be a loser, and we don't want any of our children to feel disadvantaged!" This was the same guy who sold 3 out of the 4 school playing fields fields a couple of years later to developers, with the result that there was only 6 weeks each per year of football, rugby,or hockey able to be played on the remaining pitch.

You're a bit late in closing the stable door Seth, that particular socialist horse bolted long ago.

Best of luck though in your job search.

I can see the points you make and agree that sport is important however regardless of the petition I cannot see any difference being made. In difficult times with the whole country struggling ideal things need to be cut to in order that key services can be provided. In this current climate key services are being cut and will struggle so I cannot see how money can be spent on things like this

Anyone who has ever provided a service to a central or local government department will be able to tell you several excellent ways that they can cut costs, negotiating properly and professionally with their suppliers is only one of them - even the people who work within central and local government departments can tell you several ways that they can all cut costs, I've dealt with many such departments over the past 20 years and if I couldn't cut 25% of the overheads in any of them without reducing standards then I'd be a sorry business person.

you couldn't be more wrong, teachers still take teams but the man power does not exist to cater for so many teams, diverse sports and competitions to organise without the partnerships. And primary school is non existant without the partnerships not just my 'opinion' but that of the primary teachers.

The figures of children now in sport due to the ssp's speak for themselves, it's massive.

Some of the posts on this thread have highlighted such an old fashioned view of school and community sport. But what would I know, I'm only involved in it every day and speak to people accross the country doing the same, seriously, some of the ignorance is unbelievable. Some though have posted comments which show more up to date insight.