Inclusive schools need sport
It’s cold, it’s wet, your boots don’t fit and your jersey is itchy.
The sleeves aren’t long enough to keep your hands warm. Your mouth guard keeps falling out unless you clench your jaw, and you have a lingering fear it’ll get stuck in your throat. Ninety minutes of rugby stand between you and finally going home.
Your teacher announces you will be playing in a seven-a-side round robin today. He selects the three biggest guys as the team captains and tells them to take turns picking players to make the teams. You try not to shiver as all those surrounding you gradually make their way into the three squads. You stand there until you’re the last one left, then make your way, unwanted, into the final team, dreading the game that awaits.
There’s an honourable reason why those who speak of inclusive education tend to be nervous to commend sport. Four million mid-lifers report that negative PE experiences have put them off exercise and sport for life, and 40 per cent remember being picked last for teams.
In this context, sport seems like a punishing, stressful, and decidedly exclusive way of doing school. And an expansion of it seems to heedlessly ignore the most vulnerable children.
However, this conclusion is mistaken. In fact, we need much more sport in school. Universal sport. And we especially need it if we believe in inclusive education. There are three reasons for this.
First, only with universality can we protect against exclusion. When participation is optional, provision is usually thin. When provision is thin, it is girls, disadvantaged children, and those with SEND who lose out. Who are picked last, competing in a sport they hate.
Girls are less likely than boys to say their school offers sport they enjoy and are over a quarter less likely to take part in extracurricular sport or physical activity. Similarly, pupils eligible for Free School Meals are a fifth less likely to take part; and those with SEND are a quarter less likely to be part of a sporting club than other children.
The Centre for Social Justice heard clearly from teens in our recent research that thin provision means provision constrained to the ‘sporty ones’. A smattering of sport leaves teens on the fringes, missing out or picked last, without a single sport they enjoy.
One boy in our research spoke of how compulsory sport lowers the stakes, saying ‘I enjoy the lack of choice… no one is tempted to sit out. It means that if I perform badly, it’s not such a big deal because I have been forced into it.’
Second, teenagers are isolated, and sport is a golden ticket to belonging. A third of teens report high or very high feelings of loneliness, no surprise really when 37 per cent of 15-year-olds say that they hardly ever leave their bedroom except for school and a quarter of them report spending over six waking hours at the weekend in their bedroom.
Teachers are very clear about one thing that achieves belonging: activity. Nine in ten think that being active improves pupils’ behaviour and schoolwork, and almost nine in ten also feel physical activity improves the school’s values, culture and identity – its sense of belonging. If we are committed to inclusivity, we must be honest about the unique benefits of team sport and we must ensure this does not become the preserve of private schools.
Parkrun is a wonderful example of this: one of their targets is to slow down the average competing time in the race. It is a race, but it is a race designed to engage the least active, the most nervous – the ‘picked-lasters’, if you will. Competition nourishes the soul – as we heard from the brilliant charity KICK – but this does not mean we’re here farming for elite athletes.
And this brings us to the third reason inclusion needs more sport. Learning to lose is crucial for being ready to flourish in adult life, and it is only inclusive if everyone gets to lose. We often speak of the best schools being able to take every child and find something they’re good at. Truly inclusive sport demands finding, for every child, something they are bad at.
As we look to where our teens are heading, the landscape is tough. Employers aren’t hiring and NEET (not in education, employment or training) rates are soaring. Most will get knocked down a bunch of times before they land on their feet. As well as preparing them as best we possibly can, loving them properly means making them ready for that.
Sport provides challenge, failure, and heartbreak in a controlled, safe environment. One girl we spoke to for this research told us how she often felt embarrassed in school PE, but she urged that pupils should not be allowed to sit out, asserting that ‘you shouldn’t be taught to be scared’.
It’s no surprise that those who have played sport – the cold, the wet, and the muddy of it – have 42 per cent better odds of having landed on their feet in employment or education by 21 or 22.
The child picked last for rugby deserves a better experience of sport, not to be robbed of it. Inclusive educators don’t give up on children who find certain enriching opportunities hard; they give every child the chance to be part of it.
So, on that rugby pitch. You may still be cold. Your jersey may itch. You may miss a tackle, drop the ball, and lose the game. But at the end there should still be someone telling you they’re proud you gave it everything.
And there should be other games to try, other teams to join, and chances to get better. And when you turn up next week, someone should be glad you came – and tell you that.
Every child deserves a place on the team, the experience of losing, and a chance to improve. Especially the child picked last.
The IEC blog provides a platform for a range of voices and perspectives. The views expressed are those of the individual author and should not be taken as representing the official views of the Community.