THAT’S AN IDEA

Outsourcing physical education

B JAYASHANKAR

Director, SportzVillage, jay@sportzvillage.com


Living in Bangalore, you are more than likely to run into young people who handle crucial business processes of organisations based in America. Handling irate customer calls to analysing and preparing medical reports. This city is living proof that outsourcing works.

In the context of schools we find that outsourcing is limited to very few areas (school buses!). Teaching is rarely outsourced. However, the Sports Department is one department where schools are short staffed and in general have inadequate resources. I recommend that they try outsourcing the Sports Department (PE).

Consider the facts: In this age of specialisation we have one coach teaching sports as varied as cricket, football, track and field events, basketball, volleyball, throwball etc. Show me a math teacher who teaches biology! The net result is sub optimal athletes, disinterested children - quality suffers.

Outsourcing the sports department to a professional sports organisation will ensure that schools can get multiple discipline coaches, more coaches, more flexibility (why pay for the summer holidays!).

Unlike classroom sessions sports sessions need a coach-student ratio of 1:15. A school, which has 2000 students, will need at least 120 sessions of PE classes in a week to ensure that each student gets a 45-minute workout.

Again, 45 minutes per week means three hours in a month or 30 hours in a year. Thirty hours of play is just paying lip service to the entire requirement of physical education. Ideally, students should get 45 minutes per day! Which means that schools need 600 sessions of sports classes. That would mean at least 25 instructors! Obviously schools do not have that kind of resources (A combination of management time and money) which is why it pays to outsource!

Outsourcing can also create a 360-degree sports system – which will be a combination of pre-school time + in school time + post school time system + school holidays. A larger sports entity can also ensure that talented children get the best possible sports advice.

It is time the education system began to give importance to sports for us to even have a remote chance of competing at the international arena.


(Do you have a brilliant idea that could make a difference to the education system? or to the art of teaching or learning itself? A simple idea that could blaze a trail? Easy to implement but far-reaching in consequence and impact? If you do, mail them to us at dheducation@deccanherald.co.in or send them in to Deccan Herald, Education desk, 75 MG Road, Bangalore -1, in not more than 400 words. The most original and innovative of the lot will be published in subsequent issues of DHEducation)