Why Sport is Not For All
Through the 1970s and 80s, the then Sports Council established many campaigns to promote mass participation in physical activities. The umbrella title was "Sport for All". There were then various dimensions of the campaign aimed at specific sections of the population, for example, "50+ Everything to Play For"
"Sport for All" turned out to be one of the most enduring, and well known, slogans introduced by the advertising industry of its era. It became the generic synonym of mass participation, and is still widely used in schools to refer to high levels of engagement - with or without its capital letters.
The unintended legacy is confusion. For most people sports are bound up with the image of competition. Often in outdoor team games. Based on that definition, sport will never be for all. Competitive games will never command the attention of all people, at any age. Whilst a great majority of 12 year olds may be enthusiastic about sport, by the time they have passed maturation, that number will already be a minority. In some schools this is a significant minority.
Why is this? Certainly in part it is a direct reflection of the quality of their experience. The standard of coaching, the level of encouragement and the frequency of appropriate competition are the most frequently established factors. Where these are of high quality and available to all abilities, engagement with traditional sports remains high until children leave school. Even then, it is a rare school where more than half of the Sixth Form are regularly involved in outdoor games.
Should sport be for all? It is a straightforward fact of life that competitive games will never appeal to everyone. Especially Rugby and Hockey. Any attempt to achieve this is destined to fail. The only question is, by how much?
Does it matter? In terms of the success of a school's high performing teams, it probably matters very little, except in those schools where the culture is so weak that even the most able don't want to play. Does it matter for children? That depends.
It depends on what replaces it. Where the alternative to compulsory sports is to drop out of the games programme, or to "opt" for a token, undemanding activity of moderate quality, then it probably does. If team games refugees are instead engaged by a quality programme of alternative sports, or of health promoting exercise, then it probably doesn't matter at all. This is particularly so where these activities are valued in the culture of a school. Where being active, per se, is rewarded and recognised as a worthwhile achievement, regardless of the activity. Many of the physical and social benefits claimed for participation can be delivered equally through a variety of avenues.
The most important, and enduring, outcome which schools can promote is attitude. A positive attitude towards health and exercise, together with an understanding of its value and a habit of being active. And yet in many schools, this is a relatively token consolation prize for not being good at games. Rare are the schools that truly recognise the value of positive attitude, and overtly encourage this for its own sake.
The Sports Council got it wrong. There was nothing wrong with the sentiment: they just used the wrong words and confused everyone. Traditional sports are not for all. They never have been and they never will be. However, exercise and health certainly can be. For all pupils of all interests and abilities. That is probably the most important lesson that schools can teach