Michael Gove fights mythical beast

Cheap headlines for the otherwise impressive Education Secretary in proclaiming the “return” of competitive schools sports. The idea that such sports were suppressed by right-on lefties is well debunked by Conor Ryan, Best Blogger on Education:

Even in the 1980s, when I was schools press officer for the ILEA, I organised the launch of a detailed independent research report on team games in London schools, accompanied by great photos of scores of London school sporting success stories, disproving the idea that the ILEA – and not a few misguided heads – was anti-competitive sport. It won plaudits from the Mail and Telegraph at the time! The Labour political leadership of the ILEA in 1988 was keen to promote it in London schools.

The Daily Mail today asserts as fact that there has been

a decline in competitive sport brought about by Left-wing councils that scorned it as ‘elitist’ and insisted on politically correct activities with no winners or losers.

Ryan quotes figures showing that, on the contrary, since 1997, competitive sport in schools has grown. Such numbers are of course fatal to the myth, but we need only one fact to disprove it: there aren’t many Labour councils left, and certainly no “Left-wing” ones.

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