Saturdays have changed significantly in independent schools in the last 30 years. Morning school has become a thing of the past, except in the fullest of boarding sectors. Its loss was little bemoaned. However, other dimensions of Saturday school – principally sports fixtures – remain intact. There may be more in the morning than in previous years, but the majority of schools still operate a significant part of their inter-school competition at the weekend. Other schools never had Saturday lessons, but always operated inter-school sport at that time.

This creates a challenge for staffing. When the majority of teachers...

Where Have All the Graduate Assistants Gone?

School sport has wandered into a workforce crisis. At a time when programmes are wider, more extensive and inclusive than ever before, the coaching population is more limited, especially on Saturdays. Many of the staple constituencies, including classroom teachers and part-time coaches, have contracted, leaving a constant challenge to resource programme ambitions. Parental expectations of quality have increased, as quantity of deliverers has shrunk.

This is the background of the rise of the graduate sports assistant in schools. A relatively recent addition to sports departments, schools have come to depend upon...

The Spring Term has always been an uninspiring time for school sport. Dark nights, cold and wet weather, frosty mornings and mock exams. It has always been a season demanding dogged persistence from teachers and coaches and anticipating better times ahead. Those better times used to be the Summer Term – long, sunny days accompanied by the more relaxed pace of Cricket, Athletics and Tennis. After a miserable British winter, this can finally provide a climate conducive to sport for an energised population of staff and pupils. It reinforces the conviction that school sport really is solar-powered.

However, the...