Why schools should be free from providing PE, sport or swimming - Yorkshire Post Letters

I APPLAUD The Yorkshire Post’s exposé of the dismally high proportion of children who enter secondary school unable to swim – and fears about the pools due to close.

I have read readers’ letters and tweets (The Yorkshire Post, August 26), and pondered what the nation’s (i.e. England’s) response should be.

Forget the national curriculum as most schools are now academies and therefore untouched by it. And liberalism has nowadays triumphed over statism and corporatism; a few decades ago we took for granted that there should be a monolithic state education system and that the state provided near-mandatory swimming lessons for all.

People reject this set-meal approach now; we all want à la carte.

“I don’t want my child to have to be in a pool with the opposite sex”.

“I don’t want the teacher looking at my child’s body”.

“I don’t want my child to be splashed by others / mocked for not being able to swim / for being too fat”.

“My child has a skin reaction to chlorine”.

“My child has private swimming lessons so I don’t want their learning time to be wasted on inferior school swimming lessons”.

“My child becomes stressed unless there is soothing music played in the swimming pool”.

Comments are similar with regard to school sport. We have become atomised. I conclude, reluctantly, that schools should be freed from any obligation to provide PE, sport or

swimming.

Instead, shorten the school day somewhat and provide state-funded clubs to teach swimming, sport, PE, woodwork, IT etc - all manner of activities.

Where schools could have a role is in providing venues for some clubs in order that families unable to arrange transport to offsite clubs could still get some provision.

To our entitled à la carte parents, the quid pro quo must be made loud and clear: “Not content with one-size-fits-all, mandatory state provision? Well here’s a voucher – now find a club that suits your personalised requirements – and don’t blame us if your child doesn’t learn to swim.”

People cannot have it both ways.

People cannot demand socialist levels of support with liberal levels of choice (perhaps former PM Margaret Thatcher’s most poisonous and damaging word).

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