Most schools fill one or more boxes on their timetable with a commodity called “Games”. It is a universal nomenclature, and omnipresent. Widely loved, and rarely challenged. Most schools have an anti-games lobby on their staff; few of these are sufficiently radical to be abolitionists. Acceptance of value is widespread.

“Can we have a game, Sir?” is an equally prominent enquiry. It is the enquiry of choice of children in schools all around the world. It is usually to be found in lessons whose timetable title is “Games”. However, it is rarely answered without qualification: “At the end”, “After...

There isn’t a boarding school in Britain that doesn’t have a population of overseas pupils. For many, this is 15-20% of the school roll, and often a significantly bigger proportion of the boarding community. As the cost of boarding has soared, many schools have secured their future by looking overseas – typically by turning their attention eastwards, towards Asia and Russia.

Overseas pupils provide a problem for the Games programme. In the early years of the invasion, overseas pupils were a sufficiently small number to be conveniently ignored. They existed on the margins of the physical life of a...

Presumably, one of the principal aims of school sport is to stimulate in children a lifelong love of physical activity, and an appreciation of its benefits? Post school participation is an oft-quoted success criterion of PE.

But what exactly do schools want pupils to love? "Sports" or "physical activity" is too vague a concept. So what might children learn to love as a result of their experience of school sport?

They might learn to love to win. A performance driven approach to school coaching will emphasise this, reinforce its value and importance and see vanquishing...