“PE is not Sport.” A proclamation that I’ve written on social media and announced to others as a means of educating their ignorance. Those who often talk about the subject, but do not teach it, tend to view sport and physical education as the same.
I’ve exclaimed “PE is not Sport” consistently over my career: when a new government policy document is made public, or when an external body makes recommendations on the subject, or even when a Secretary of State makes a press release about it. I thought it was a great thing to say, and it certainly brought me attention on social media whenever I wrote it. But I never really considered deeply what I was saying until I was recently challenged by another to interrogate my words and what they really mean.
Physical Education is the name given to a subject that is taken at school that focuses on the learning of, about and through movement. Sport is a little trickier to pin down. I rather like Parry’s (2019) definition of sport as an “institutionalised rule-governed contests of human physical skill” for its brevity, but even that is challenged by Mareš and Novotný (2023). Even so, PE and Sport are clearly different things and therefore there is truth in stating the maxim “PE is not Sport“, but how does that help?
How does playing what Stolz (2014) would call language games move things forward? I thought it profound, but really it is the same as an Art Teacher stating “Art is not painting” or a Drama Teacher stating “Drama is not acting”. True statements, but so what? When I state that “PE is not Sport” am I unintentionally providing others the message that I’m anti-sport and believe sport has no role to play in the subject? I certainly would not want to do that. As painting enriches Art and acting enriches Drama I believe that sport enriches PE. Therefore this requires me to move beyond stating what PE and Sport is and is not, to considering what sport should be included within PE and what purpose should it play.
Two positions that I see on social media, within the recent academic literature and said to me by those in the profession that looks to address content and purpose is 1) look at how many traditional team sports adults play and 2) sport within PE puts children off physical activity later. Both are reasonable statements and which I have considered myself at times. However greater thought is required here.
The most recent Active Lives Adult Survey shows that adults tend to engage in physical activities such as walking, active travel, fitness activities, cycling and swimming much more than playing team sports like football, netball, cricket and rounders. Yet it is these later ones that dominant the PE curriculum, especially at secondary school but often creeping into primary schools as well. This raises important questions about what sports should be included in the PE curriculum.
Perhaps a PE curriculum that resembles what physical activity adults actually take part in would better serve the interests of children and young people? This needs serious consideration, to ensure a logical fallacy is not committed. Just because an adult does something that we want children to do when they become adults, it does not necessarily mean that children should do what the adults do. The process of becoming a physically active adult who runs, does yoga, cycles to work and lifts weights might not be found in creating a PE curriculum solely around those activities.
The work by Lars-Magnus Engström (2008) highlights this conundrum. It is one of the very few longitudinal studies which looks at how children’s and adolescents’ physical activity affects their inclination to be physically active 38 years later. The study found that people who were physically active at age 53 were more likely to have a breadth of sporting experience and higher physical education grades during their adolescence. This breadth of sporting experiences allowed children to experience different logics of practice, and perhaps it is this that can significantly contribute to the process of becoming and being a physically educated person. The study does caution readers that these findings may not be applicable to individuals from different generations or time periods.
Another position others have about sport within PE is that it put children off physical activity. I’m sympathetic to that, but I’m not convinced it is the sport itself that is the problem, but what is done within the name of sport. Sport is an empty vessel and it is what we fill it with, how we fill it and why we make those decisions that greatly influence the experience of children.
Take rugby for example. A decision can be made to force all participants to engage in the contact version of it, whether they are made aware of the potential risks, and whether they want to or not. Within lessons the focus of the lesson is on accurate replicating techniques. Little time is given to develop an appreciation and understanding of the sport and therefore those who attend clubs outside of lessons are rewarded with praise and good grades. This is what Kirk (2010) would describe as “PE-as-sports-techniques”. Or a decision can be made to learn about rugby through a modified non-contact version of the game, by setting children tactical problems to solve, and encouraging them to cooperate and collaborate to support each others learning and enjoyment of playing the sport. It is our choices to why, what and how that influence whether sport plays an educative role within our subject or a destructive one.
The decisions made about what sport to include within the PE curriculum and how to structure and teach those sports is what is most important. We need, as a profession, to be more thoughtful and nuanced how we talk about and advocate for sport’s role and purpose within a PE curriculum. This does not come by extolling the maxim “PE is not Sport” and what PE and Sport is and is not, but by moving beyond that and taking charge of the discussions about the way sport should be used within an educational context in general and more specifically within the PE curriculum.