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'The Best: How Elite Athletes are Made' by Mark Williams and Tim Wigmore

Posted Wednesday, 18 November 2020

This book is an unlikely alliance between a sports scientist and a journalist. It aims to provide an explanation of various factors surrounding high performance in sport, and combines research evidence and anecdotes to do this. This is sometimes an uneasy combination, but for the most part it packages science...

Choice and Compulsion in School Sport

Posted Friday, 13 November 2020

There is an historic assumption in pretty much all schools that pupils should play culturally significant games. That range of sports is relatively small, and the rationale is largely invisible. When pushed, the sector produces a range of reasons, some more substantial than others, why team games enjoy undisputed primacy...

What’s Next for Extra Curricular Sport?

Posted Friday, 6 November 2020

It’s been a game of snakes and ladders for school sport over the last 8 months, and there is no suggestion that it will be ending any time soon. The latest throw of the dice relates to activities during lockdown. Friday’s confirmation from the DfE that sport could continue in...

Book Review - 'The Long Win: The Search for a Better Way to Succeed' by Cath Bishop

Posted Wednesday, 28 October 2020

Cath Bishop is a former Olympic medallist, Foreign Office diplomat, civil servant and management consultant. From this unique perspective, she examines the concept of competition. She challenges the idea that winning and losing are binary alternatives, and questions whether the single-minded pursuit of victory on these terms is a positive...

Has Covid provided a solution to the clash between school cricket and exams?

Posted Friday, 16 October 2020

I moved this summer from a boarding school in Somerset to a highly academic co-educational day school in Central London. This has made me aware of the enormous impact that exam pressures have on the summer cricket season. In this school, the reality is that cricket only exists in the...

Does Inter-School Sport get in the Way of Increasing Participation?

Posted Friday, 16 October 2020

Any discussion of the aims of physical activity in schools doesn’t take long to get round to participation rates. This is usually a reference to the number of pupils who willingly (often voluntarily) take part in various forms of sport and exercise. In some environments, this means taking part in...