London 2012: Schools have to get more kids playing sport

With the Olympics starting this Friday, they'll be an opportunity for millions of young people to be inspired by the exploits of Britain's athletes.

I read an interesting and slightly worrying statistic yesterday that said 40% of British medal winners at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing were privately educated.

Only 7% of the UK's population are privately educated, yet private schools are producing a disproportionate amount of our Olympians. Are we meant to believe that being privately educated makes you a better athlete?

I don't think so - but it suggests that the success of Britain's athletes in the next couple of weeks won't make much difference to many young people. Their chances of emulating our Olympic athletes will be down to the type of school they go to rather than sporting talent.

If you go to private school, sport plays a bigger part in your education. If you do have some sporting talent, there's a greater chance it will be identified and developed. This is no longer the case in many of our state schools.

As soon as the Olympics end next month, the talk of Olympic legacies will begin. How will the Olympics encourage more young people to participate in sports when so many schools don't seem to care about sport anymore?

Last week it was reported that two thirds of Britons don't take enough exercise to stay fit.

I think keeping fit and playing sports is a lifestyle choice, and it begins quite early in childhood. If you play a lot of sport growing up, you're more likely to keep it up during adulthood.

The fact that so many of our Olympic athletes are privately educated tells you that private schools still value and encourage sport in a way that state schools don't.

There's two negative effects to this. Firstly many kids at state schools miss out on the joys of taking up sport; and secondly it's not great for the health of the nation as less people grow up with habit of keeping fit which can lead to all kinds of health issues later in life.

Looking back at my own school days in the late in the late 1980s and early 90s, sport was a big part of my education. I was lucky to have the chance to play football, rugby, cricket, basketball, and athletics. Outside of school I did Karate and played badminton.

I didn't think that was anything special but I've started to realise that many school kids don't have the chance to play such a range of sports at school.

Critics of school sport fail to understand that sport is character building, and helps people in different areas of their lives.

You learn self discipline, new skills and techniques. How to work in teams, dealing with pressure, disappointment and achievement. I don't understand how others don't get this!

There's loads of different things which we hope the Olympics can encourage and inspire and I hope one of those things is that it get more kids playing sport as part of their school education.

The return of the 'Tory teacher'

Some of you might remember the name Katharine Birbalsingh. She gave a speech at last year’s Tory Party conference in Birmingham, exposing the failings of Britain’s state schools.

Instantly she became a darling of the Tory Party. Here was a black, female, London schoolteacher claiming the left wing liberal bias in Britain’s schools, had contributed to a dumbing down in standards. To senior Tories it must have seemed that they’d won the lottery!


Birbalsingh’s been back in the news this week. I’ve read two interviews with her in the Guardian and The Sunday Times as she’s got a book coming out providing a warts and all fictional account of life in an inner-city school.

She’s had plenty of time to write the book. After giving her speech she soon found herself out of a job and has struggled to find another teaching position.

The ‘Tory teacher’ label seems to have stuck, but after reading some of her thoughts and accounts of teaching in state schools, I think she's been harshly treated.

In the interview I read in the Times, Birbalsingh’s claims she doesn’t regret the speech on a moral level, but admits it was a mistake on a personal level.

She argues she wants to expose the truth about our state schools. How a
left leaning liberal bias amongst the teaching profession has hindered standards and contributed to some of the chaotic and violent incidents you can find in some of the country’s toughest schools.

I’ve been interested in the backlash she’s experienced. State schooling isn’t perfect in Britain, but I think she's raised some important issues and questions.

The fact that she said this at the Tory Party Conference and was a previous Labour voter, she seems to have been blacklisted from the profession. It's as if she’s not allowed to say such things.

I know the stereotype says all teachers are ‘lefties’ but there must be some Conservative voters within the profession? I have some sympathy for Birbalsingh it's almost as if she's being punished for speaking out and not conforming to the typical image and views that teachers are meant to have.

I’m not a Conservative voter, but I agree with some of the things she says. She argues that despite exams results improving under Labour - standards did not. I agree with this.

Children aren’t told how well they’re doing in comparison to their classmates in case it undermines their confidence and self esteem. Stories like that just make me groan!

In the Guardian interview, Birbalsingh spoke about the introduction of school league tables and how they’d put more pressure on schools to achieve good exam results. It’s resulted in many schools encouraging pupils to study so called ‘soft’ subjects at GSCE in order to keep exam results high and improve a school’s league table ranking. Having a higher ranking will hopefully attract the sort of pupils that will impove a school’s performance.

For me, this isn’t radical news. My cousin is a secondary school teacher at a North London Academy. He’s taught in London schools for the last 10 years, and has told me exactly the same thing.

It’s a long time since I left school; almost 20 years and I admit I’m probably out of touch with what’s going on, but some of the points Birbalsingh’s been making are views held by many people in the country, but because of who she is and where she expressed these views, they've been politized to such an extent she can no longer find a job teaching. I think that's unfair

Although it hasn’t been great for a career, Birbalsingh’s at least stirred things up a bit and there’s nothing wrong in at least challenging some of the more dominant thinking within the teaching profession that currently exist.

Student Tuition Fees: The Debate Nobody's talking about.

I've just been watching the 10:00 news on the BBC - more violent scenes of students protesting in Central London over the proposed rise in tuition fees.

Prince Charles and Camilla have even been caught up in the trouble, with demonstrators attacking the Royal couple’s car as they tried to make their way to the theatre.

Hardly a great move by the protesters. That’s what’s going to dominate the news headlines and overshadow all those who took part in peaceful demonstrations.

I’ve been wondering when I should write something on tuition fees. I think this is as good a time as any seeing as the Coalition government won the vote in parliament today to raise fees.

When it comes to tuition fees, I keep thinking to myself that nobody’s talking about the issue that’s constantly on my mind, which is this:

How many graduates do we really need? And what is the purpose of a university education?

What's obvious is the idea of a free university education is over for students in this country. Anyone wanting to go to university will need to make some contribution.

The key point is the amount that universities will be allowed to charge students. Fees will potentially treble from the current figure of just over £3000 to an upper limit of 9,000.

It’s likely that the most prestigious universities, those within the Russell Group are likely to charge some of the highest fees, which they will argue are needed in order to compete with the best universities around the world.

That’s a strong argument, and it’s important that universities are funded properly in order to compete. The downside is that we might be creating a three-tier university system.

I can see some people being put off from applying to the best universities because of the high fees, and will choose other courses at less popular less prestigious insititutions.

If I was a student, or a young person looking at going to university in the next few years, the thought of graduating with between £30 – 40,000 worth of debt would scare the life out of me.

I understand the argument that this could put off people from poor and working class backgrounds, but not all universities will charge the maximum fees of 9,000, and students won’t need to start paying back the fees until they start earning over £21,000.

This sounds reasonable, but in reality most graduates are going to spend most of their careers paying off their debts.

One thing I find annoying is the assumption that most graduates will eventually find jobs where they earn salaries way above the national average, and therefore will be in a position to comfortably pay off their debts.

Nobody ever seems to focus on those students who might study arts and humanities degrees like English, graduate from a mid ranking university with debts of £30,000 plus; before spending their working career never earning much more than the national average.

There are loads of graduates earning between £25,000 to £40,000 a year which are good salaries but not exceptional.

Will these people ever pay off all their debts? I just think to myself, whether having a degree in such circumstances is really worth it?

This is why I don’t understand why more people aren’t debating the purpose of university and asking how many graduates the country really needs.

It seems this government like the previous one insists the country needs a large graduate workforce to compete with other nations in the global economy.

Personally I think we have too many people going to university, and many people have grown up being told they need a degree in order to have any sort of successful career.

There’s too much emphasis on having a degree in its own right, when the job market is really about relevant skills and experiences and constantly looking to maintain and develop those skills. It’s more important for the country to have a highly trained, skilled workforce.

University degrees are too often seen as the be all and end all. Not surprisingly people are upset when they’re told they need a degree to be successful in life, yet see the tuition fees increase so much, they no longer think they can afford to go.

People from poor, working class, and even middle income families will need to think long and hard about whether going to university is really what's right for them.

Of course people from poorer backgrounds should be encouraged and helped to go to university, particularly the more elite ones, but people will need to really think about what they want from a university education.

University can't be just an excuse anymore for people to 'mess about' for a three years before they enter the real world.

Deciding to go to university will now become a serious life choice that will affect people for the rest of their lives. This is what needs to be discussed more, along with questioning the value of degrees rather than just focussing on the student demonstrations and tuition fees.

Tough times ahead for graduates.

I was reading today about the problems new graduates are facing in the current job market. Apparently on average, there are 70 applicants for every job vacancy.

It sounds tough but I'm not convinced the situation is any worse than in previous years. This year's graduates have been told that if they want a job they will need to:

'consider flipping burgers or stacking shelves when they leave university'

The report I was reading in the Guardian said that leading firms in investment banking, law and IT are due to cut graduate jobs this year.

This makes the assumption that every person who graduates from university is automatically looking to get on a graduate recruitment scheme. I didn't, and I know many of my contemporaries didn't either.

A lot of people don't even know what they want to do with themselves in their early 20s and might not be looking for an immediate long term career.

For other graduates there's too much of this naive expectation that they're somehow entitled to some amazing job at the age of 22-23 just because they've got a degree. It's time to get real!

Some of it isn't all their fault though. Schools, the government and the media are constantly telling people that having a degree is some guaranteed ticket to a wonderful job and lifelong security.

I left university in the summer of 1998. After deciding I couldn't spend an entire month watching the World Cup that summer, I started looking for jobs. I found the whole experience annoying and frustrating!

It was a struggle just to get a basic admin office job, as recruitment agencies constantly told me; you can't do this or that unless you have a year's office experience, can use MS Office and can touch type at a speed of 50 words per minute.

I eventually ended up getting a job in a call centre and in fact spent the next year working in various call centres, something which I really didn't want to do.

After getting sick of call centres I tried finding office jobs, but guess what, agencies were telling me I should stick with call centre work because that's what my experience was in. Ridiculous!

Stories like the one I read today, make out that graduates struggling to find jobs is some new phenomenon, it isn't. Graduates have been leaving university and doing non graduate level jobs for years, and many of them haven't been complaining.

I look back my degree and see it mainly as a box that's been ticked, as soon as I left university I quickly realised that the job market is all about skills and experience. The more skills and experience you have the better.

The Guardian report quoted Carl Gilleard the chief executive of The Association of Graduate Recruiters saying it was better to have some employment then no employment at all. He went on to say:

'There are lots of other skills required and valued, like people skills: you could be on a counter in a store. It's all about building up your skills base.'

I'm pretty sceptical about such comments. It's fine if you want to do that type of job for a short period of time like 6 months, but if you continue for much longer, you run the risk of being typecast as employers start believing that's all you can do.

My advice for students currently at university is to start looking at ways of developing practical skills applicable to the world of work during the holidays and term breaks.

Learn some office skills for example, learn how to type, this is something which I learnt to do after a I graduated. Having always worked in offices it's one of the best things I've ever learnt.

Going to university has become little more than a middle-class right of passage for many young people. A transitional period between teenage life and entering the adult world.

Once you leave university and enter the job market it doesn't matter what qualifications you have, you can never assume that you are entitled to any job you want.

You have make yourself as well rounded a possible in terms of the skills and experiences you can offer a potential employer. Not only that you need to constantly keep looking at ways of learning and developing yourself in terms of skills.

Many graduates also need to have some patience and except that the benefits of a degree may take between 10 - 15 years before it really begins to kick in. This might be hard to except for some but that's just how it is.

Finally, we all need to start being a bit more honest with each other over the needs of the job market and the benefits of having a degree. Some young people have been lied to by schools and the government and I feel sorry for them.

It annoys me sometimes to read such articles as I think a lot of time they're out of touch with what's really going on.

I'm glad I'm out of it all to be honest. There are many aspects of the job market that I find frustrating, but I'd hate to be a new graduate now trying to find a job.

False hope from 'soft' qualifications!

Last week the head teacher at Harrow public school, Barnaby Lenon announced that pupils from deprived backgrounds were being conned into thinking that they could progress through life by a system that hands out, in his words 'worthless qualifications'. He then came out with a line that amused me when he said:

State schools risk producing students like "those girls in the first round of the X Factor" who tell the judges they want to be the next Britney Spears but cannot sing a note.

I think the point he's trying to make is definitely true, but it doesn't just apply to kids from deprived backgrounds, but all children going through the education system. It's as if kids leave school and university these days and expect to achieve any job or career they want just because they have a few qualifications. Qualifications which may or may not even be that relevant in the job market.

It's almost 20 years since I completed my GCSEs, yet it only seems like yesterday. I do feel as if the education system in this country is completely different to what I experienced growing up.

I get the impression that everything is very target driven, with Sats, GCSEs and school league tables being the root cause. Together they've clearly put more pressure on schools to demonstrate to parents how well they're performing. This obviously has a knock on affect for those schools performing poorly or with more disadvantaged children, as it makes greater sense to encourage their pupils to do 'softer' subjects in the hope of pushing up exam grades.

This might be good for the schools but echoing Lenon's point, it does put many kids at a disadvantage, as they're being denied the opportunity of doing harder GSCE subjects that potentially will get them into more academically minded 6th Form colleges and more prestigious universities.

There's a lot of children who regardless of how bright they are, might as well right off the prospect of doing challenging A-Levels and getting into a decent university the day they start at the 'wrong type' of Secondary school.

My cousin is a teacher at a London Academy, and when we chat I get the chance to find out what's going on in our Education system. I don't know the exact figures, but at his school the amount of kids achieving GCSEs between A-C grade are quite low, at least below 30%. I had a look at his school's prospectus and you can do BTECs in subjects like leisure and tourism from year 9 onwards and these count as GCSE exam passes.

This is where I start to become a bit sceptical about things. Ambitious academically minded parents are not going to allow their kids to do a BTEC in Leisure and Tourism at GCSE as it doesn't mean anything. Decent 6th colleges and top universities aren't going to be interested! I feel a bit sorry for kids who do these types of subjects expecting that it will really impress future employers or universities.

At my cousin's school they do a general science GSCE rather than individual sciences like Physics, Chemistry and Biology. You know for a fact that private and Independent schools will retain the individual sciences and therefore give their kids a distinct advantage.

Leading on from this, people talk about the lack of social mobility in this country, which I think has ground to a halt. It's never going to improve when kids from disadvantaged backgrounds aren't given the chance to study the same subjects as children from more middle class homes.

Young people have passed more exams and have more qualifications then ever before, but university academics and employers still complain about levels of numeracy and literacy of school leavers and graduates.

For me I don't know what the point is in having 10 GCSE A* grades, Diplomas, BTECs if you then struggle with things like basic grammar or you can't even write a letter properly! It's the basics that younger people seem to be struggling with, and which ultimately prove to be truly valuable during a person's life.

I can't say that I have any answers to the problems raised. But I think there needs to be more honesty within the education system. More honesty to children from all backgrounds as to the value of qualifications. Having a decent education isn't just about how many exams you've passed, and a person's success in any job or career isn't determined purely on exam grades.

I'm glad that I went to school during the time that I did. A time where I could go to my local comprehensive, and where kids from both working and middle class backgrounds could get a well rounded education, studying a range of subjects that gave them a proper grounding to make a success in their lives. Unfortunately there are many kids who aren't getting this chance.

Who needs a university education?

This week a number of university vice chancellors made proposals for a significant increase in university tuition fees. According to reports more than half of university heads would like to see students pay at least £5,000 a year, with no upper limit, which critics argue would result in many of the country’s elite universities charging some of the highest fees.


For me there are two main points that have been raised. The first one being the debate on who and where university funding should come from. There is now a general consensus, which believes that the idea of university education being free at the point of delivery is now over.

With more people going to university, it now appears totally unrealistic to think that students should not contribute something towards their studying. I was fortunate enough to go to university before tuition fees were introduced, but I would now fully expect to contribute to my education.

In addition to this many of the elite ‘Russell Group’ universities claim that an increase in funding is essential if the UK’s top universities are able to compete with some of the world’s best higher learning institutions. Again this is a perfectly valid argument, and as a nation we should want to see our universities compete with the worlds best.

The second point which has occurred to me, and which I think is equally if not more important is this: How many young people do we want to go to university? And how many young people really need to go to university? For a number of years now the Labour government have stated that it would like to see at least 50% of all young people go on to study at university. Again this figure is unrealistic and if anything adds to the problem of university funding.

Time and time again I’ve heard the government say that people who go to university will on average earn a higher salary in their life time then those who don’t. Now I’m quite positive this was the case 20, 30 years ago, but I’m certainly not convinced by this now.

There seems to be what I can only describe as the ‘graduate-tisation’ of the job market where some people are now doing jobs that require a degree, that a generation ago a good set of O-Levels or A-levels would have been perfectly adequate for. We’re in danger of encouraging too many young people to get degrees which will not earn them fantastic salaries or jobs, but will leave them in huge amounts of debt and perhaps a certain amount of disappointment and bitterness that their degrees aren’t worth what they were promised they would be.

Those who disagree with this will argue that having more people going to university helps people from lower income backgrounds get degrees, and improves social mobility. If anything all that has happened is that more middle class kids now go to university, with social mobility slowly grinding to a halt in this country.

Of course we should encourage people from all backgrounds and walks of life to go onto Higher Education, but we need to think long and hard on the actual numbers we need, and the overall purpose of a degree education. I don’t think we can have this debate of tuition fees without considering these other points.