The government will have to focus on state-run schools to develop sports at the grassroots level
Last week, an athletics coach of Pakistan, Major Shabbir, told me after returning from Poland that he conducted a research by asking questions to coaches from around the world during the World Junior Athletics Championships. The question was: where do they pick their talent from? They all said from schools.
But unlike the rest of the world, Pakistan does not have a strong sports culture at the school level. And that is why talent rarely comes to the mainstream. In Sri Lanka, most of the talent comes from schools. A few days ago, a Sri Lankan Table Tennis Federation’s vice-president told me during the South Asian Junior and Cadet Table Tennis Championships in Karachi that they pick children of seven to eight years from school level competitions and train them for the national level.
But, here, the story is different. There are various reasons why sports is not effectively taken care of at the school level in Pakistan. A majority of the schools don’t have playgrounds. They mostly depend on the grounds which are either state-owned or privately-owned.
However, government schools are much better off than private schools in terms of playgrounds. Although not properly developed, schools built in 1960s also boast of playgrounds. One rarely sees any such space in private schools as they are built on a few marlas of land.
The government will have to focus on state-run schools to develop sports. The state should add to the existing sports facilities in these schools by installing gymnasiums for indoor games. Sports in schools should be regularised and its coaching standard improved.
These days, a physical education instructor handles the whole sports affairs of a school. During events, the same sports in-charge appoints other teachers as heads of other sports disciplines. These heads and even the school sports in-charge are not qualified to prepare players for competitions. It’s a real flaw which needs to be addressed.
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In order to get qualified coaching staff, sports federations can be approached as they can train school’s sports administrators through their coaches education programmes which are regularly held for preparing skilled coaches.
In the past, when sports were under the education ministry, Pakistan would get most of the talent from schools. Still, the area can remain with the education sector if the authorities sit and debate on the issue of how to boost sports at the school level.