The Spectator

Letters | 25 August 2012

A place for sport

Sir: Many of us in the education world are baffled by the political furore over school sports fields. Harris Federation runs 13 academies, largely in tight urban spaces. All manage to deliver outstanding sports lessons. Why? Because of the skill of our sports teachers and the vision of our sponsor, Lord Harris of Peckham, who once dreamt of becoming a professional footballer.
Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich has sport as a subject specialism but almost no outside space of its own. Bizarrely, in 2008 Southwark Council would only provide planning permission to build the school on condition that we would not use the park opposite for sport. Our local MP, Harriet Harman, has not helped our efforts to get this reversed.

Yet the school’s PE department still manages to provide an outstanding sports programme, using the Peckham Pulse swimming pool, King’s College London’s sports grounds and the Herne Hill Velodrome, where Bradley Wiggins began his cycling career. We annually hire our local sports stadium, engaging 10,000 students in a day of competitive sports. A little imagination can deliver a great deal.

The Olympic legacy issue ought to be about giving pupils the thrill of competition and an outstanding experience of sport. And this is about far more than whether a school owns an on-site playing field.
Daniel Moynihan
Chief executive, Harris Federation

All are counted

Sir: Ahmed Rashid’s otherwise very credible analysis of the war in Afghanistan (‘End game’, 18 August) is impaired by his claim that ‘countless British soldiers have been killed’ in Helmand and Kandahar. All these brave soldiers were most meticulously counted. To assert that the British dead were not booked is a disrespect to the modern military machine, and to the memory of those who gave their lives for their country only to be then written off as an uncounted heap of fallen warriors.

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