It’s a bit unusual for a Tory peer to make a fuss about privilege and public school advantages in comparison to state school disadvantages, but as it’s the Olympics silly season I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised.
Lord Moynihan has condemned the dominance of public school-educated athletes in Team GB as “wholly unacceptable” and called for an overhaul of the education system to increase the number of state-school pupils winning medals.
I fail to see how it’s unacceptable, inevitable perhaps, but these people are simply doing their best and the public school network allows pupils to get the best out of their systems. As opposed to the state schools dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator I’d guess.
Lord Moynihan said that about 50 per cent of the medals won by Team GB in Beijing in 2008 were secured by athletes educated in the independent sector, who made up just seven per cent of the population.
He described it as “one of the worst statistics in British sport”, and said all Olympic sports should seek to be more like football, where the proportion of privately-educated players was seven per cent, mirroring society as a whole.
“It is one of the worst statistics in British sport, and wholly unacceptable that over 50 per cent of our medallists in Beijing came from independent schools, which means that half of our medals came from just seven per cent of the children in the UK,” Moynihan said.
“There is so much talent out there in the 93 per cent which should be identified and developed and given equal opportunity through a sports policy that reaches out to able-bodied and disabled children whatever their background.
Well the talent may be out there, but even if it’s spotted it’s unlikely that much will come of it as the state school system is simply not fit for purpose other than in areas of ignoring reality and sexualising our kids. The state itself interferes far too much in education and that’s before the teaching unions step in to add further ‘politically correct’ poison to the mix in the way of equality, racism prevention and religious intolerance, which are neither needed or actually work, kids being kids after all.
Yes, the education system needs a massive overhaul, but to produce a generation of Olympic athletes? I somehow think not.
We’d be best off trying to actually get it to the position of producing kids who can read, write and do basic maths. To do that we need to get the politicians out of education and remove the teaching profession away from being public servants into independent self employed professionals. Then by putting them on fixed contracts weed out those who are actually useless at their jobs along with any union influences.
Condemning a system that works is not the way to improve a failed system and that’s where Lord Moynihan has it all wrong.
I taught in the independent sector for years – in fact, one of my former pupils is competing today, while another won gold at a previous Olympic games.
At the school where I worked, in addition to a full academic timetable including PE lessons, pupils had a minimum of three hours of games lessons a week, as well as sports clubs, matches and team practices – not unusual for a boarding school.
This was possible only because a significant number of teachers were prepared to spend time on sport after school and at weekends, including driving pupils to away matches on a regular basis.
Much is made of the quality of facilities available at independent schools but the huge contribution expected from staff cannot be overlooked. It would be interesting to know what the teaching unions have to say about the matter.
(In the interests of accuracy, I should point out that I personally abhor team games; my extra-curricular contribution was more of a cultural nature.)
That aligns with my experience many decades ago at day-school. As well as a full complement of sporting ‘clubs’, there was a vast range of other topics covered, film, book, stamp, chess, Russian, music, you name it, there was a club for it.
All these are operated by teachers in their free time, as far as I know unpaid, after hours on weekdays and Saturdays (we went to school Saturday mornings). They did it because they cared for both the suject and the pupils.
It had the additional benefit of forging quite different relationships between staff and pupils, away from the formality of the classroom, allowing the humanity of the teachers to come through and for both sides to see each other in a new light, after which better results in the classroom undoubtedly flowed.
Interestingly, this was in the days when all kids were not collected at the gate by parents in cars, we all made our own ways home alone, up to 20 miles, by foot, cycle or public transport. Therefore, ‘staying late’, either for a club or detention, was never a logistical issue, you just got home a bit later. I fear today’s self-focused parents would not appreciate that flexibility and will carelessly discard the wider benefits their offspring would gain.
This is the Lord Moynihan who ‘coxed the Great Britain silver medal winning Mens VIII at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games’ and went to ‘Monmouth School … an HMC boys boarding and day school’? Is he taking the fucking piss?
Again, spot on QM. Get the state and politics out of education and direct the resources to the right places.
And for god’s sake please do stop wanking on about private schools and how it’s all so unfair. They should be applauding private schools for showing them how to do it properly, not knocking them at every opportunity.
The funniest part of that for me is the ‘all Olympic sports should seek to be more like football, where the proportion of privately-educated players was seven per cent, mirroring society as a whole.’
Well actually no and fuck off. No sports should try to emulate football in my view and we are continually shit at it as well. Does he think that the mentally challenged squillion pound a week earners who play the game actually send their kids to the local comp?
This also smacks of good old quotas which politicians of all colours seem to be in love with for some unknown reason. ‘Mirroring society as a whole’ my arse. We have a shite society, who’d want it mirrored anywhere?
FYI yes I went to a fee-paying boarding school. My dad worked in the MOD and my mum in various clerical type jobs, and they scrimped and saved to pay for myself and 2 sisters to get our education. My dad’s dad was a bus conductor. So, point? Most private schools won’t get you much at all in life when you get out into the real world. If you’ve been to the Etons, Winchesters etc then yes, of course, there is still all the funny handshakes and old school tie stuff going on. Most private schools just aren’t anything like that, but they do provide a great education and are much better resourced obviously because they can fucking afford it.
It’s not about ‘privilege’, it’s about people making sacrifices for their children because the State has failed to provide strong enough competition for educating their kids. In his case maybe it is, given the way his bio reads. But that makes it all the stranger as to why he’s coming out with such bollocks. Is he fucking Laurie Penny in disguise or something?
When supposedly Tory policians start saying things like this you just know we are seriously screwed. I didn’t vote for the bellends last time and I probably never will again.
Gosh, people who pay the bills themselves get better education AND sports lessons than the unfortunates who the government ‘educates’
Dog bites man.
unfortunates THAT the government ‘educates’
(declaration, I went to a crappy comp. QED)
You’re right; it all boils down to envy.
Much of the success is in the kind of events that require unlimited access to horses, dinghies, rifles and so on – however much you reform the state system, you are unlikely to place all of this within the means of more than a minority of parents (who happen to be, coincidentally, the ones who can also afford private education).
Slightly o/t; one of my favourite quotes from ‘Frasier’:
Martin: Seattle’s a big city. There must be a bunch of German fencing instructors, each of them with dozens of students.
Frasier: Yes, but are they wealthy students?
Martin: No, most of them are inner-city kids who are trying to work their way out of the ghetto with nothing but a foil and a dream.
Some of that maybe true but rifles aren’t expensive, it’s just the state doesn’t want any naughty proles knowing how to shoot or owning guns, because an armed populace is a difficult to oppress populace.
That and some of the less balanced ones might go all John Wilkes Booth.
True; I was thinking more of owning sufficient land to be able to shoot unhindered.
Ah yes, of course.
That said I used to go to a great pistol club in the 1980′s which seemed to be in a bit of an old disused railway siding and being long and straight, was ideal for the range.
Sadly now gone.
At least he hasn’t gone for the dumming down that politicians usually go for – abolish private schools or insist that 93% of UK competitors come from state school. To suggest that state schools should be improved is progress, even if actual education should come first.
If all the school playing fields hadn’t been sold off for housing estates or nursing homes then perhaps the school kids of today, stagnating in politically correct schools could have learnt something more than “It’s my right, innit.” It’s a shame that Moynihan didn’t do something about this when he was Minister of Sport (following his Olympic gold medal as the tiniest, lightest, passenger in a rowing boat). But then Moyniham himself didn’t go anywhere near a comprehensive on a sink council estate for his education so what would he really know about the ordinary people’s options for sport? “As ye sow, so shall ye reap” or not, as the political case may be.
Penseivat
At independent schools, they actually have the children doing PT [PE] and games. Conditioning may have something to do with it.
Now remind me, WHO was it that sold off all the school sports playing fields, again?
To be honest its not just the playing fields, although that doesn’t help. Its more the attitude that enables you to achieve sporting success is fostered in private schools and stamped on in state ones. Most of the medal successes in the Olympics are for sports that do not have huge salaries (if at all) like those available to footballers etc. So the motivation to succeed is not monetary, it comes from within – a burning desire to be the best, to improve oneself, to get to the top of the tree no matter what obstacles are put in your way. The State educated generations we have now are all about instant gratification, the ‘want it now’ brigade. The concept of spending years slogging away at some obscure sport in order to get the chance of Olympic glory once or twice in your lifetime would be anathema to most kids today. It is only in private schools (and the middle classes who send their kids private) where such self denying attitudes are still inculcated.
Good point – and you might add self-sacrifice on the part of the parents; what almost all the top athletes and competitors have in common, whatever their educational background, is the long-term support of family prepared to travel or be up at all hours to take them to training and events, or even to move house to be nearer a training venue.
It is parents like these who are far more likely than most, I would argue, to dig deep and make sacrifices to pay school fees even out of a modest income.
Moynihan seems to be implying that parents who send their promising child to a fee-paying school are behaving unacceptably – in other words, it’s just a re-hash of the old argument that blames the academic decline in the state sector on parents removing their bright children.
A very good point re parents. Time and time again when you hear top sportsmen and women interviewed (other than footballers, where the money available pretty much pays for everything from a very young age) you hear the heartfelt thanks to their parents for transporting them to practice sessions, to county matches, to regional centres of excellence, to competitive matches many miles from home. As you say such parental attitudes are many times more likely among parents who are already foregoing personal consumption to fund private educations for their children.
Personally I am concerned about the low numbers of public school pupils playing for premier football teams…shocking! Something should be done…