Vocal Voices

Apparently today's schoolchildren are not meeting their healthy excercise targets.
So a committee of MP's have said (you've guessed it) that the schools should be doing more; in this case they should be running "breakfast excercise clubs".
Why is it always the schools that are supposed to be doing something?
Should the State always be trying to run every aspect of an individuals life?
And if they are so keen on kids taking excercise, why have politicians allowed so many bl**dy school playing fields to be sold off?

I cannot find a link, but the proposal does not surprise me.

It is the modern way for the State to wish to control every second and every aspect of our lives, but we adults are too prickly to comply. However, if it can get to the young ones early enough, and for long enough - 8am to 6pm - and sell the process as a "benefit" it is a future job ticked off as" done".

With schools being pressed to take children from two years old upwards, the state is replacing the family. It won't end well.
Mary Bousted, one of the few teacher's union leaders I have any time for, says that we are institutionalising our children too early; and she's right.
Mrs Cromwell (recently retired teacher) says that she thinks the next step will be to force schools to build bedrooms for children and adopt them at birth.

They showed a school in Leeds this morning, on Breakfast, the Head said she'd love to offer more PE but showed us what facilities her school had - a scruffy playground and no school field

My old primary, St Augustine's, Harehills Road, was an old Victorian edifice in one of the poorest areas. It did not have a school hall, the Chapel seating area seconded as that, and the playground was an area of tarmac about the size of a tennis court, but every class did PE for half an hour every day.

It was mainly bean-bag, tig or Bull dog, and we did it during the school day. The only "kit" needed was a pair of plimmys or bare feet, and everyone had some of those - no get-out excuses.

cromwell wrote:And if they are so keen on kids taking excercise, why have politicians allowed so many bl**dy school playing fields to be sold off?

Part of the school field was sold off at the secondary school that my boys go to, now they don't have enough room to hold their annual sports day so what they do is hire a stadium (the council sold off their own stadium a mile away so that option's gone), to my knowledge they've used the Alexandra Stadium at Birmingham, Aldersley at Wolverhampton and also one at Stoke and none of those will come cheap for a day's hire I'm sure and I dread to think how much money comes out of the school budget to hire coaches to bus ALL pupils to these venues, and it's not a small school - there are around 300+ pupils per year group.

However, the school has a swimming pool which cannot be used because the heating system failed a few years ago and a fitness suite which is also closed because piece by piece the equipment - treadmills, exercise bikes etc - has broken and the money isn't there to repair/replace.

Joe, at 13, has one PE lesson on his timetable per week, that takes up just one period. I asked him the other week if he'd got his kit. He said he didn't need it as they're doing PE theory at the moment. I can understand that if they've chosen to take PE as a GCSE but this is just a regular PE lesson so why are they not running around playing football or basketball?

When I was at primary school we had a break in the morning and afternoon. We played various games in the yard. This had a concrete surface and was big enough for a tennis court but it was not marked out for one.
The building caught fire and was eventually demolished and houses have now been built on the site.
At the grammar school, we had two PE lessons each week and one games period in one afternoon. The school closed many years ago--Labour council. The playing fields have been sold for housing development.
There was a cricket pitch in the centre of the town which was used by the boy's grammar school-- a different one to mine. After a long battle the local council gave planning permission for a sports hall to be built on half of it. A rectangular monstrosity without any character. The old grammar school building is now used as part of the outpatients department for the local hospital.

JoM wrote:

cromwell wrote:And if they are so keen on kids taking excercise, why have politicians allowed so many bl**dy school playing fields to be sold off?

Part of the school field was sold off at the secondary school that my boys go to, now they don't have enough room to hold their annual sports day so what they do is hire a stadium (the council sold off their own stadium a mile away so that option's gone), to my knowledge they've used the Alexandra Stadium at Birmingham, Aldersley at Wolverhampton and also one at Stoke and none of those will come cheap for a day's hire I'm sure and I dread to think how much money comes out of the school budget to hire coaches to bus ALL pupils to these venues, and it's not a small school - there are around 300+ pupils per year group.

However, the school has a swimming pool which cannot be used because the heating system failed a few years ago and a fitness suite which is also closed because piece by piece the equipment - treadmills, exercise bikes etc - has broken and the money isn't there to repair/replace.

Joe, at 13, has one PE lesson on his timetable per week, that takes up just one period. I asked him the other week if he'd got his kit. He said he didn't need it as they're doing PE theory at the moment. I can understand that if they've chosen to take PE as a GCSE but this is just a regular PE lesson so why are they not running around playing football or basketball?

Jo, all of that is shocking. PE theory?
The cricket and athletic pitch at my old school is now a housing estate; two of the rugby pitches are now housing or industrial estates; the fields where we used to run cross-countries are now part of an industrial estate. Also the curriculum is so crowded thanks to more and more government fiddling about that there is no room for PE.
And then politicians act like shocked virgins, clutching their pearl necklaces and wondering why kids don't get enough exercise?

I understand what is being said about sports fields, but they are a bit of a red herring as far as exercise is concerned, certainly at primary school. All that is needed is a bit of space and the minimum of kit, as many people prove by working out to a DVD in their front rooms.

Drop some of the rubbish in the primary curriculum and replace it with PE. Get the children exercising on a daily basis and they may carry it on into secondary school and later life. Excercise is not exclusively about rugby, football, cricket, rounders, tennis or netball.

That is true WM.
At primary school we used to get two poles set in metal bases, stand them some distance apart in the playground and then have relay races inbetween them. Not expensive or complicated.
Even at secondary school for part of a PE lesson the teacher would just have us do a race around the school building!
At playtime at infants school the boys used to kick a ball about and the girls used to do skipping games; the skipping looked a lot more difficult than the footie!