You remove P.E and you will also risk the increasing problem of child obesity, as P.E is sometimes the only place that children can take part in any sort of physical activity. When you look at the rate at which obesity is rising in the United Kingdom, if we remove physical education we will remove in some cases the only bit of physical activity that children do throughout the week. If we remove P.E from the curriculum you are looking at a making obesity rise at an even faster rate than at present. This will have a huge effect on children’s whole life, it will give them a short life span and open up a greater risk of getting disease related to obesity such as heart disease. Another problem with removing physical education there will also be a drop in the performance in other classes as there will not be a chance for children to release all the energy that they pent up through sitting through class after class and not getting a break. Often children can only concentrate through lesson for a while and taking part in sport is a great way for them to get an academic release so that they can relax and start work again after the class.
If we remove Physical Education from the curriculum you will also be removing one of the key components in a strategy the government has set up. This initiative is called the PE, School Sport and club links (PESSCL) strategy the government has all ready but in a lot of funding for the initiative. PESSCL has been set up to help deliver more physical education and make sure that the standard at which P.E is being taught is at the highest level throughout every school. PESSCL has set itself numerous targets for itself to complete examples of three of the targets are below.
- creating 200 specialist sports colleges by 2004
- deploying 1,000 school sport co-ordinators by 2004 to co-ordinate and build links between schools, to develop inter-school competitive sports and after school activities, to co-ordinate training of teachers and work to promote physically active lifestyles
(Post, 2001)
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enhance the take up of sporting opportunities by 5-16 year olds by increasing to 85% the percentage of school children spending at least 2 hours a week on high quality PE and school sport, within and beyond the curriculum, by 2008 (DCMS, 2003)
I shall now go through each of the eight different components looking at each and different components and seeing what they do and how they would be affected by the removal of physical education from the curriculum. The eight different components are:
1. Specialist sports colleges
2. School sport partnerships
3. Professional development
4. Step into sport
5. School/club links
6. Gifted and Talented
7. QCA PE and sport investigation
8. Swimming
I will first look at the affect that removing P.E has on the specialist sports colleges. We remove physical education it will prevent all the aspirations for sports colleges in the United Kingdom. Sports colleges have been set up to increase the quality of P.E that is being taught. The colleges are creating a lot of jobs for people such as partnership development officers (PDM) and school sport co-ordinators (SScos). There has already been 328 designed sports colleges set up through PESSCL and four of these becoming academies with focus on sport (standards, dfes, 2006). So this is all prove that with sport in the curriculum you can help create better colleges of excellence, which can only be good in long term for teaching. We can also see that the sports colleges are helping to meet the government’s initiatives of two hours of quality P.E every week (teachernet, 2006). If go about removing physical education from the curriculum you will miss the vast opportunity for success in our athletes and improving a lot of schools around the country with the money from sports colleges strand of PESSCL. It will also result in the loss of a huge amount of jobs set up through the sports colleges.
The second component of PESSCL to look at is school sport partnerships. School sports partnerships are forged between different schools coming together to produce a higher quality of P.E for children. In this partnership there are commonly three role involved they are the partnership development manager (PDM), School sports co-ordinators (SSCos) and primary and special school link teachers (PLTs). Each of these role links into each other to try and provide as much Physical education and after school sport as possible (Youth Sport Trust 2006). All of these are key to keeping interschool sport going and making it better, but if we remove physical education from the curriculum we will lose these links between schools and sport in schools will suffer. There will not the intra-school competitions which schools like to compete into to win trophies as we have stopped the link between everyone in the school sports partnerships.
The next aspect of PESSCL to be looked at is the professional development side. This looks at developing the standard of the delivery of coaching in schools and clubs. It hopes to make them more professional in the way they deliver there coaching session (Teachernet, 2006). The programme sets up different courses for the teachers to take on improving there teaching in physical education, but if remove P.E from the curriculum it will result to throwing all of this work out the window and preventing the development of sport in this country. We are trying developing new ways of thinking through courses such as the ones run by the professional development section of PESSCL, but if we remove P.E it will result in sport grinding to halt and the country falling behind in all sports and not even coming close in all of the world championships. When we remove P.E it also means that it will be children missing out on fulfilling the potential they have to be successful in sport, without P.E they will not have the opportunity to find out if they are god or even great at any sports and there talented will be wasted.
Also involved in the PESSCL programme is step into sport. The step into sport scheme focus on children aged 14 to 19 and trying to encourage them into sport leadership and volunteering so that they continue this on in later life. If we remove P.E then it will reduce the numbers of people taking part in step into sport. To keep sport running it relies on 1.5 million volunteers and many of these come through from the step into sport programmes (youth sport trust, 2006). So if we remove physical education it has a serious affect on the amount volunteers that we have in the sport and the quality of coaching that they are delivering.
The next component of PESSCL that I will be looking at is the school and club links set up through the PESSCL strategy. This component is to build relationships up between clubs and schools so to insure that as many people as possible are taking part in sport. The plan for this component is to increase the number of children aged 5-16 taking part in high quality club environments going from 14% in 2002 to 20% in 2006. With this plan it has gained the help from 22 sports governing bodies. If we then remove physical education from the curriculum we risk losing the partnerships with all of these governing bodies. You my also burn all of the partnerships set up between schools and the local clubs as they are no longer teaching there children the range of different sport. This component has also set up 800 multi skill clubs for children aged 7 to 11 this is to help and build fundamental skills before they enter into club sport (Sumner et.al 2006). Again this will be affected by removing physical education and it stops children from developing some skills for life such as hand to eye co-ordination.
The third component to be looked at is the gifted and talented section of the PESSCL strategy. This component looks at trying to give any children with good abilities a chance to reach there potential through sport. PESSCL tries to insure that each and every person who takes part in sport has the chance to meet there own aims and objectives and compete to the best standard capable of there ability. The programme has set up a strategy to support talented athletes in programme called the Junior Athlete Education, so far they have set this programme up in 240 school partnerships (teachernet, 2006). If we go about removing physical education it will only destroy these links and partnerships and it will also result in a lot of young talented kids not getting the chance to reach there potential and only affect the success of sport in England.
In QCA aspect of PESSCL it is there to try and make sure that the teaching of physical education is to a high standard around the whole country. They have set up guidelines to make sure that they are teaching to a high quality level some of these guidelines are:
- implementing the curriculum effectively making sure all pupils are included and involved using the time you have for PE lessons well
- using the equipment and space you have for PE well
- assessing, monitoring and evaluating pupils’ progress and the quality of the outcomes they achieve
- rewarding and celebrating your pupils’ achievements
- Identifying your own learning needs so that you can become a more effective teacher.
(QCA, 2006)
So we have went through efforts to train up P.E teachers so that they are working at an high enough level and are being trained so that the best quality physical education is taught. But if we remove this then all of the effective work that has been put in place will all just be a waste of time and effort. We are also looking at trying to inspire children in the sport and if we just drop it from the curriculum what sort of message are we sending to the children if do this.
Swimming is also another aspect of the strategy that will be affected if we drop physical education from the curriculum. Swimming is an important aspect in life as it is also health and safety factor. With more people able to swim to a competent level it will result in less risk of people drowning or given persons a better chance of surviving if they are able to swim. This is one main reason we should not be dropping physical education from the curriculum it is a way in which to take a step backwards in trying to make the nation a safer place. So with swimming it is a life skill that you will be able to do through out your life and enjoy.
If we look at all of the improvements that has been made already by the PESSCL. The strategy has been a successful programme for the little time in which it has been running. Some of the improvements are in the participation of primary school children in extra-curricular club with an increase between 10% and 20%. There has also been an improvement in the fact that most of schools visited in the ofsted report have adopt the PESSCL aim of having 2 hours of high quality P.E each week. These different improvements are good but the strategy is still looking for more improvements and it will only serve to try to get to an even higher level of success. (Ofsted, 2005)
Though there has been a lot of success in the PESSCL strategy there have also been the disappointments in the plan. Some disappoints are that physical education’s time is considerably reduced with school events, national testing and examinations. So even though there are also other problems that are needed to be fixed. Although the benefits of the PESSCL strategy has reached many schools, it has not yet reached all schools with many of these schools are not even giving a satisfactory level of physical education. (Ofsted, 2005)
We can see that through PESSCL the government has been working hard to improve the standard of which P.E is being taught at. But if we then remove physical education from the curriculum it means that you will not benefit from all of the progress that has come about already, as well as some of the benefits to come about in the future from the PESSCL strategy.
When we look at all the effect that has happened through physical education it seems silly that we should even contemplate getting rid of it from physical education. It has moved on from the dark ages when it was not taught to the high standards which have now been set for physical education. Though there has been improvement shown throughout physical education there is still a need to improve. If we remove physical education from the curriculum it would be like giving up on the fight against obesity and condemning millions of young children to a life with major threat from heart disease through there unhealthy lifestyles. When looking at physical education in the curriculum we should not look at removing it but look at increasing the time allocated to it in schools as it is one of the few subjects that will have a major affect on every pupil’s live.