The Government is keen to promote competitive games, and anxious to see their return to maintained schools. They hold up the quality of team games in the independent sector as a beacon to be followed, and incline to attach a range of benefits to participation. The justification for this claim remains remarkably vague, though the absence of science has done nothing to dilute the conviction.

So, what is a competitive school game? Is it simply one in which both teams are striving to vanquish the other in a zero sum game in which only one can succeed?...

One of the few things on which most people are agreed is that school sport should be fun. Whilst that might not always be obvious from the ways in which it is delivered – or the response of pupils to its demands – it is one of the few universal justifications for the inordinate expenditure of time, effort and resources that school games demand.

This should, therefore, make designing the programme relatively straightforward. By providing activities that are fun, widely agreed aims are readily met. Sadly, it’s not as simple as that. And the reason is that fun has...

It’s that time of the school year. Pupils in smart new kit, balls straight out of the packaging and over inflated by Gap year students. Shiny new gym mats and goal posts. Even the First Aid bags are fully equipped, and the cones in colour

co-ordinated piles. Ambitious plans for new initiatives, fixture programmes and the optimism that emerges from a well spent summer holiday and the fact that no teams have yet been fielded – or lost.

A lot of time, energy and money will be expended before the Carol Service marks the end of the Autumn...