Sports

Gordon Brown promises more competitive sport in schools

by Rob Peters | August 24, 2008 at 01:54 pm

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed to make competitive sport a serious priority in UK schools, proposing a number of ideas to bring this about:

1) Increase time spent on sports from two to five hours a week at schools
2) Train thousands of new sports teachers
3) Raise athletic funding in schools
4) Set up a new task force to get girls interested in sports at an early age
5) Make a national website where school teams can compare nationwide league tables

It sounds like he wants to foster the killer instinct in student athletes and do away with the "everyone's a winner" sentiment that's been popular in school curriculums.

Perhaps the Chinese domination in Beijing has got him worried about the London Olympics?

Gordon Brown vowed to bring back competitive sport in schools today, saying it had been wrong to discourage children from competing against each other.

The prime minister promised to extend the range of sports available to children and revealed that a taskforce of the country's female sporting champions would be set up to inspire more girls to participate.

"We want to encourage competitive sports in schools, not the 'medals for all' culture we have seen in previous years," he said. "It was wrong because it doesn't work. In sport you get better by challenging yourself against other people. A lot of sports are team games where people have to work together but they play against other teams."

Brown said the government had now begun to "correct the tragic mistake of reducing the competitive element in school sports".