A commonly debated issue is the sports curriculum in schools, I take the position that schools should expand their Physical Education curriculum to other major sports in Middle School and High School so students can apply these newly learnt skills to other sports that they play outside school. This can be proven by multiple reasons which are mentioned in this essay.
My first reason is that many of the skills we learn in Physical Education are not applicable to sports outside school because they play a sport that is not included in the school’s Physical Education curriculum. This is evident in our school with tennis, rugby and many other sports. A recent poll found that 61% of students only sometimes use the skills they learn outside Physical Education and 72% said sometimes or never. Another poll found that 85% of students said that they had barely used their ultimate frisbee skills outside school. This is not to say however that the skills we learn in Physical Education are useless, more so that there a lot of major sports that the school does not incorporate into its Physical Education curriculum. For example tennis which is a very widely known and played sport which is excluded from the Physical Education curriculum. Many argue that tennis can be played as an activity, however the training and tryouts is very hard to determine the level of the player when they can only participate in half court play.
Another part of expanding our school’s sports curriculum is having houses, these houses can build interaction with older grades to younger grades. As well as this houses help to build a sense of community for that sport because everyone participates in that sport. As well as this having houses gives the younger grades role models in older grades to look up to and encourages the older grades to be leaders. A recent poll in my class of 22 students found that 71% of students wanted houses. In my personal experience houses were very effective in my previous school, even when I didn’t win the race that I was participating in, I was still cheered and congratulated. As well as this school houses in my old school really helped to build some leadership and those in the older grades took the leadership role for their house. Mark Morrell, head teacher spoke to the BBC about school houses and said that there was a dramatic improvement in pupil’s behaviour. These houses play a big role in school competitions.
In school competition builds school spirit for that sport because everyone participates in that sport, in school competition also helps students to build confidence because they have support from a lot of people in their house. In school competition also should be more serious than sports day as in my previous school there were actual levels, School, Zonal, State and National. The competition also wasn’t multiple sports, it was based on athletics and the competition was selective so the best six for their grade continued to Zonal. This system worked very well for my school because it encouraged many students to work much harder and many of children in my school made it to state or nationals. I believe this system would work extremely well for a school with over 3 times the amount of my previous school.
Whilst many argue the logistics of all these separate aspects of the school’s sports system could be very difficult to manage and organise. Many other schools that are able to coordinate such sport systems with less facilities and staff. As well as this many say that competition shouldn’t be that serious however if you look at the facts in England they begin to scout for the next best footballers at nine or ten years old. This therefore proves that in other countries where there are very good athletes, there is a lot of competition at a young age.
In conclusion the school should expand its sports and Physical Education system to other sports and to other in school competitions to encourage more children to be involved in sports. As well as this it should expand its Physical Education system to other major sports so students can use their skills outside school.
"House Systems in Schools and Universities." RSS 20 News. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
Kohl, Harold W., and Iii. Approaches to Physical Education in Schools. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
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