Attitudes towards sport post London 2012

Last week marked 100 days since the end of the Olympics, and as the glow of success slowly wears off we have to start looking to the future to see how the memory of the 2012 games is going to live on. At the time, the legacy that the 1992 Olympics left behind was viewed as the benchmark for all future games, as Barcelona developed state of the art stadiums and transformed its port into a sweeping beach-front.  However, 20 years later the majority of the sports venues have never been properly used and several lie in disrepair.

London 2012 promised that this would not be the case, that the Olympics would build stadiums and venues we could be proud of and would be used for many years to come. That they would inspire children throughout the country to become more involved in sport regardless of their background and correct the link between a child’s socio economic background and their likelihood to succeed in an Olympic sport. A third of all team GB’s medal winners were privately educated even though only 7% of the UK population attend private schools.

Apathy

Despite the £1 billion the government promised to invest in school sports over the next 5 years to ‘inspire a generation’, not much seems to have been achieved yet. A survey conducted by the Chance to Shine cricket charity asked over 1,000 parents whether there had been any significant increase in the amount of sports being done by their children and 80% said there hadn’t been.

In Sheffield, home of Olympic gold medallist Jessica Ennis, 60% of parents said that their children were not even fulfilling the 2 hours of PE stipulated in the national curriculum. Although, it is too early to say what impact the Olympics has had on the sporting culture, it’s slightly alarming to see these figures because you would have thought that the biggest change in children’s attitudes towards sport would come in the immediate aftermath of Team GB’s success.

The terrifying ordeal of PE

I think the main issue, besides lack of government funding, is that while many children have an interest in watching sport they are not inspired to take it up for one reason or another. Many other children go into school with a negative feeling towards sport or worse still their perception of sport changes because of negative experiences in school.

Our attitude towards sport has so much to do with our experience of it in school. I hated PE at school and I don’t really have much connection with it now – besides being forced to watch the occasional Swansea city match with my boyfriend (and listen to endless tales about his favourite players).   

I think it’s fair to say that many children dread PE lessons rather than look forward to them. Stephen Fry said that this is how the prospect of sport at school made him feel – “Every day I would wake up with a sick jolt wondering just how I might get out of that day’s compulsory rugby, cricket, hockey, swimming or whatever foul healthy horror was due to be posted on the notice-board that morning.” And I think that a lot of children have similar feelings. Schools need to find a way of making sports more inclusive and encourage the less athletic pupils more so that they enjoy PE, rather than see it as something to avoid.

For some helpful tips and ideas of how to make sport more fun for children, or to enter your school into a sports competition, have a look at Sport England or Sport Wales.