Lost generation of children

Primary school children take part in a race. 'Ofsted has no interest in competitive sport, thus there is little desire on behalf of headteachers to spend time, energy and resources on something they know they won’t be measured against,' writes Nick Patterson. Photograph: Angela Hampton Picture Library/Alamy
We agree wholeheartedly with Tessa Jowell and share her concerns, especially those relating to children and young people (Coalition wasted Olympic school sport legacy: Jowell, 6 July). Schools are important settings for promoting health and should work with pupils and their parents/carers to address this concern, encouraging children and young people to participate in a range of physical activities and to understand how such activity is beneficial to health and mental wellbeing.
Physical activity must mean not only structured activity in the curriculum through physical education and sport, but also those other physical leisure activities available in school and in the community. Any activity which enables children and young people to be warm and breathless for significant periods of time which they enjoy and overcomes the barriers to participation brought about by disability, gender, religion and culture, should be valued. Compounded by government education policy, schools still focus too much on traditional team games, which include few and exclude so many.
Schools must be given the capacity to nudge children and young people in the right direction. Perhaps we should now have some of the UK heroes of this spectacular event providing high-profile leadership to a multifaceted healthy eating and exercise campaign.
Michael Craig Watson Associate professor of public health, University of Nottingham
John Lloyd Immediate past president, Institute of Health Promotion and Education
• Some expensive centrally driven government “initiatives” achieve very little other than ticking a few boxes and keeping consultants in employment. I can remember many sessions on the national literacy strategy when my eyes would glaze over and my brain slipped into neutral.
To succeed at something you have to develop skills learned through success and failures and this takes time
Glyn Scott
The schools sports partnership actually worked. Primary school PE coordinators met regularly and organised inter-school sports competitions – everything from football to bocchia. Secondary school PE specialists had time to come in to primary schools to take lessons and give advice. They organised brilliant sports days – I remember one at a comprehensive where hundreds of primary children attended and engaged in different sports. It was all run by their 16-year-old sports leaders. They were a credit to the school.
Nearly £9bn was lavished on the 2012 London Olympics; the annual cost of running the 450 schools sports partnerships was £162m. In 2010, Michael Gove said that the Olympics were the best way to increase participation in sport.
• It is somewhat hypocritical of politicians to talk of the lack of involvement in sport. Labour, coalition, and Conservative governments, in their demands for a curriculum that has to have measurable outcomes, have reduced sport and the arts to sidelined subjects. To succeed at something you have to develop skills learned through success and failures and this takes time. Primary schools, where passion and enthusiasm take root, have to spend endless hours on literacy and numeracy just to survive. That precious time to experience, compete and practise sport is not available. It is, however, in private and public schools, where it is still regarded as developing self-esteem, discipline and perseverance. Politicians, one expects, think local clubs will fill this gap, but they in turn provide for those who can pay the subs, and usually the kit, regardless of how children get there. This excludes a whole group of children who cannot afford any of these.
One of the aspects of the 2012 Games was the relatively small number of non-state school medallists, and I see no chance of this improving.
Glyn Scott
Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
Change the Ofstedcriteria and you might change how headteachers see school sport
• It will come as zero surprise to any schoolteacher that the Olympic legacy has foundered. Whether it has anything to do with funding is, however, debatable. Ofsted has no interest in competitive sport, thus there is little desire on behalf of primary and secondary headteachers to spend time, energy and resources on something they know they won’t be measured against. Change the Ofsted criteria and you might change how headteachers see school sport.
Saffron Walden, Essex

• There is, in our small town, what was once a centre of excellence for sports education. It was the venue used for the Italian football team for the European championship. There is a gym, a swimming pool, a sports hall with a specialist sprung wooden floor for dance, and a fitness suite, all paid for by public money. All this is to be demolished by a developer to make way for houses. Ironic that we will have 500 more homes, yet lose high-quality sport and leisure facilities for families and the community. Before the response is made that the country needs homes, we are already scheduled for 1,500 houses to be built. All on green spaces. Where will all these extra children play?