Competitiveness is still a dirty word in too many Scottish schools and the way in which children are educated should no longer be dominated by a fear of failure.
Perhaps it is that which lies behind the seeming inability of virtually every school in Edinburgh to provide the minimum recommended amount of physical activity as part of the curriculum.
Of course no-one would deny that teachers and headteachers
have anything other than the well-being of the children at heart, but in a country where health outcomes are in places worse than the Third World, the attitude towards PE in all schools has got to change. It should not be acceptable that PE is avoided because of a fear of exposing less able pupils to ridicule or an assumption that "sporty" kids will find other places to play and train.
How can it be that three very different schools – Lismore, Craigour Park and Currie – can provide the statutory two hours a week while St John's in Portobello, Clovenstone and Stenhouse manage only 45 minutes? When changing is taken into account, the children at these three lowest performers are getting at most only a paltry 35 minutes of physical activity on the curriculum.
Nor can a difficult catchment area be cited as an excuse. Lismore achieves a mighty 186 minutes while the relatively well-heeled pupils of South Morningside only receive 46 minutes a week, while down at Stockbridge the children enjoy 105 minutes a week.
And how can it be that pupils at the Royal Mile Primary, with wonderful Holyrood Park on their doorstep, only have 46 minutes a week?
While the figures are bad, at least there would be some encouragement if they were moving in the right direction , but if anything the situation is deteriorating, despite so much government focus on improving the health of the nation. That a fifth of Edinburgh schools provide less than an hour of PE a week should spark intervention by the education authority.
The resistance to change must be due either to a lack of qualified staff to run the sessions or a lack of will on the part of school management to address the situation – and the former may well be a symptom of the latter. It should not be that difficult for teachers to be trained up to run simple sessions, as do thousands of parents without formal PE qualifications at sports clubs each weekend.
Those parents who opt out of the state system often cite the importance of sport as a core reason for their choice and that should be the clearest signal that council schools are not doing as much as they should. Spending per pupil in state schools is not that much less than in an average private day school so why should the children be short-changed?
The full article contains 482 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
