Almost every school in England requires its boys to play cricket at some stage of their school career. The game deteriorates in the great majority of schools from mass participation to one of minority appeal. The only thing that varies is the size of the minority.

Is this dramatic decline inevitable? Given the universality of the problem of maintaining willing engagement in the game, it would seem logical that all schools might address the question above every season, and work out their success criteria for the game in the school. And then an imaginative plan for delivering...

The Problems with Summer Sports for Girls

The summer term games programmes of many schools present problems for many schools. Even for boys, the historic supremacy of Cricket is no more, with an estimated average of 25% of boys choosing to stay with the game once the gates of compulsion are thrown open.

But for girls it is worse. There never was a girls' equivalent to Cricket, which occupied most pupils at various levels of competence, and held an unquestioned primacy in the summer term. Most co-educational independent schools were boys schools which - for...

It’s that time of year again. Across the country, in conditions that are a bit too cool and on fields that are a bit too damp, Athletics lessons are in full swing.

There will be few schools who do not provide comprehensive coverage of throws and jumps, not least because they are encouraged to do so by the National Curriculum. And equally few schools who have found engaging ways to deliver Field events. The red faces that were smiling and laughing in previous terms’ games are significantly more rare as they form their dutiful queues waiting for the chance...