Keith Duggan: Let's make sports and exercise a fixture of our school curriculum

Isn't it high time to make sport – in all its guises – a key subject in Irish schools? Isn't it time to wake up? In an age where mental wellbeing and relentless positivity have been plucked from their meditative origins to be repackaged as an increasingly lucrative (and dumb) industry; when body-image has been elevated to a universal and unforgiving religion; when the gym habits of celebrities are more frequently reported and absorbed than famines and wars; when Conor McGregor is crediting the hours he spent reading The Secret for his startling rise in martial arts and fighting; and when sports stars have embraced the fashion for "sharing" struggles with mental health, you would think that the old PE class would have shifted a little to centre stage.

The Department of Education's pilot scheme to introduce physical education as a Leaving Certificate subject could be interpreted as a sign that public policy has begun to recognise the importance of exercise for young people. For decades in Ireland, the weekly PE class was, for kids who enjoyed sport, a brief escape from the rigours and restraint of class work. But for the thousands of youngsters who didn't feel as if sport was for them, those two letters can give shivers decades later, summoning instant recall of dismal afternoons spent in freezing, gloomy Irish sports halls, on the edge of activities while the noisiest and most boisterous tried to whale yet another shuttlecock irretrievably towards the roof beams as soon as the harassed PE teacher, tasked with providing a week's worth of exercise in 90 minutes to 30-plus kids, happened to turn their back to help out young Daly, who had managed to get his head wedged between the climbing bars again.

Some kids – girls more than boys – genuinely fear and loathe PE because of the grimness of Irish sports facilities – those mausoleum basketball halls that seemed to spring up like mushrooms in 1970s Ireland and which have been painted and papered over since – and the understandable reluctance to participate in sports in which they have no interest or expertise for fear of looking foolish.

Department estimates

As Carl O’Brien reported on these pages last month, department estimates suggest that it would cost in the region of €450 million to provide or upgrade sports facilities in secondary schools across the country (and an additional €350 million for primary schools). Despite this, an internal report notes that the department is “not in a position to consider applications” from schools to complete these upgrades. The state of the Ireland’s school gyms are not, in other words, a priority.

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How can they not be? It is becoming increasingly obvious that Ireland, despite the delusions of our hardware superstores, is never going to be the land of sunshine and barbecues. It rains a lot. For outdoor sports – Gaelic games, rugby, and soccer, athletics – playing in wet and often freezing weather is just a fact of life. The hall is there to provide alternatives. In 2005, the ESRI commissioned a report entitled Children and Sport in Ireland by Tony Fahey, Liam Delaney and Brenda Gannon. Even if you had never set foot here, you could hazard a guess as to what the Irish school sports landscape looked like. You could probably imagine a scene which included terrific competitions for the mainstream ball sports and you'd be right: the Hogan Cup, the Leinster/Ulster/Munster schools cups, school soccer competitions all have rich histories, established schools, nail-biting competitions and days that are great for boosting school morale and all that.

The quarterly reports on the rising percentages of obesity in Irish children are beginning to fall on deaf ears

There's a reason for this. In the ESRI report, over 80 per cent of schools had access to a GAA pitch. The same numbers had access to a basketball court – another architectural oddity of 1970s Ireland, when, it would seem, it was decided that every single school in Ireland should be provided with rings and wooden courts and that these facilities should never be replaced. The result, though, is that schools basketball is thriving. This week, for instance, the U-15 All-Irelands take place in the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght, bringing together schools from right across Ireland at C/B/A divisions. The competition is terrific for the schools involved, and the best thing is that the rules decree that all players on the scoresheet must play at least one quarter; everyone on the team gets a reasonable game.

No interest in sports

But a school can only have so many teams and so many sports. What about the students who have no interest in ball sports or competitive sports or who feel – often without any justification – that they are “no good at sport”? The ESRI report detailed the range of sports available to students; the mainstream ball sports predominated. Choices such as aerobics, martial arts, dance, weight training and squash seldom featured. This was not the fault of the PE teachers nor the schools profiled. Anyone who has been to school knows how much voluntary time teachers – PE and otherwise – give to teams. It’s simply that the emphasis – the blueprint, the facilities, the time on the weekly schedule – was not there when that report was written in 2005. And things have changed little in the 13 years since.

The quarterly reports on the rising percentages of obesity in Irish children are beginning to fall on deaf ears. But it’s clear that there are massive and extraordinarily difficult and expensive consequences which will occupy future ministers for health. Contrarily, the fixation on physique – particularly among adolescent boys – is an entirely new pressure that has become part of growing up.

Of course, double PE won’t fix all that. But establishing physical education as a core subject in Irish schools that has something to offer every student would at least help to drag a vital element of growing up into the 21st century.