Pupils getting physical

Jenn Bremer hates PE but loves climbing

Alternative sporting activities are creating a lot of interest and proving to be a popular way of keeping fit, writes Ben Bentley.

Jenn Bremer hates PE. Always has done.

“I don’t like anything with a bat or a racquet,” says the 16-year-old from Sutherland School in Telford.

“Then there’s basketball, football and rugby. I can’t run to save my life and until two months ago I had not done PE for two terms.”

Minutes later she is clambering up a vertical rock wall in an all-action display that makes her look more like Tank Girl than PE gooseberry.

It’s physical education, but not as we know it. Scampering up walls at the Shropshire Climbing Centre in Newport is just one of a range of alternative PE lessons now being offered to youngsters in Shropshire in an effort to get them active and offer them a life-long interest in sport. Others activities include pool, ice skating, golf, bowling, and dancing.

In an age of obesity, there is a realisation that “old skool” PE practices may have only served to turn kids off sport. That and the fact that children who are less adept at sport often feel humiliated by being made to dither around in unflattering sportswear in front of their peers.

So for those disaffected by the prospect of traditional PE activities such as a cross-country run in the rain where the only allure might be the prospect of a sneaky fag break at the halfway mark, alternative sports seem to be working.

With the last bit of wind she has left in her lungs, the girl who hates PE adds: “I always used to climb trees and I love this. It’s very physical.

“Last week I pulled an arm muscle and hurt myself but I wanted to come back again.”

Her PE teacher, Angelique Cheshire, is positive about alternative lessons. Physical jerks are not for everyone, and in old money the word “pool” would have set most kids dithering in their damp trunks. Today, however, the word is as likely to mean a game of eight-ball on the green baize.

“We’ve done pool, bowling, ice skating,” says Angelique enthusiastically listing non-traditional PE sports.

“We’ve been ski-ing at Madeley and we’ve done golf at Madeley.

“The kids get something different, a different sort of PE. They opt for this, it’s a choice and they can do more traditional sports.”

And that’s fine. For many boys, football will remain the top choice, while for others the idea of throwing javelins and doing handstands in skimpy singlets will be greeted with mixed enthusiasm.

Popular

The new Shropshire Climbing Centre in Newport has become just one popular destination for PE students in the county.

Louise Smith, who runs the Shropshire Climbing Centre in Newport with her partner Karl, says: “We had one girl who came here and said ‘I hate PE. But if it was like this I’d do it every day’.”

It’s this attitude that appears to vindicate Ofsted inspectors’ assertion that alternative sports, which also include street dance, skateboarding, cheerleading and martial arts, are improving engagement with pupils, particularly among vulnerable groups.

A recent Ofsted report into PE lessons said pupils must take “decisive action to halt the trend to obesity”.

The report states: “The rate of obesity in young people continues to rise; projections are frightening – for example that nine in 10 adults and two-thirds of children will be obese by 2050.

“The challenge is for all schools to find time for physical education and to give young people the skills and dispositions to last them into adulthood so they make independent choices about healthy lifestyles.”

The choice certainly seems to be having a positive effect for the children from Sutherland School who are bubbling with enthusiasm for alternative PE lessons.

A group of lads are trying to master a particularly tricky boulder wall, where an outrageous rock overhang, would suggest the task is impossible.

But they won’t give in. One by one they are egged on by their mates in a display of impromptu teamwork.

“Go Swifty, go – you’ve nearly done it,” comes the chorus from the ground ten feet below where Swifty is now dangling. In this instance Swifty takes a tumble but he’s straight to the back of the queue to try again.

Meanwhile, high on the rope wall is 16-year-old Kim Hewish from Telford. This sort of physical challenge is all pretty new to her, but she’s relishing the challenge.

“I’ve been doing it for two weeks and I’ve never done it before, but we are coming out of school time now as well,” she says.

“I cannot stand football and rugby, rounders and netball, but all the popular girls take that over.

“We’re more physical.”

Back on terra firma, Jenn Bremer adds: “You won’t find the popular girls here because they might break a nail.

“They would complain about the harnesses – ‘Does my bum look big in this’?”

At the end of the lesson, teacher Angelique Cheshire is having to tear the children away. And as always it’s the girl who hates PE who is last off the climbing walls.

“I have to force her on to the bus,” says Jenn Bremer’s teacher.

“She would be here all day otherwise.”

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