Making Progress? Sport Policy, Women and Innovation in Physical Education

Abstract

In recent years, a variety of policy documents issuing from major providers of sport in the UK and elsewhere (for example, Sports Council UK, 1994 a,b; Sports Council for Wales, 1995a; Sports Council for Northern Ireland, 1996) have highlighted, amongst many other things, the significance of in‐school and extra‐school Physical Education (PE) in any endeavour to promote equity and greater participation of girls and women at all levels in school and community physical activity and sport. With reference mainly to the most recent of these policy texts, the Sports Council for Northern Ireland (SCNI) Women in Sport Policy Framework,published in 1996, and calling on research carried out by the authors of this paper on PE in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, this paper adds further weight to the claim expressed in these texts that PE in the primary sector in particular, is a critical site of influence upon children's thinking about themselves and others, both in physical activity and sport. Lesson time PE and more informal playground activity are in dire need of attention. And unless women, the majority of teachers in primary schools in England and Wales, are positioned as leading agents in curriculum innovation and change, progress towards greater equity in PE and sport is unlikely to be achieved. Finally the paper considers whether the arrival of a National Curriculum PE (NCPE) will help promote the interests of girls and women in PE and sport in both primary and secondary schools and prepare them for their futures in leisure and paid work.