India, together with Azerbaijan, Brazil, Palau and Zambia is one of the five countries where 'International Inspiration' is working to inspire and enrich the lives of young people by playing and excelling at sport.
As part of the programme, Sharon Kee, an Advanced Skills Teacher based at Ivybridge Sports College in Devon has over the past 12 weeks been working with 11 schools in Delhi to develop an operational PE curriculum for the Indian Primary Schools.
Sport in the playground:
Her work with the schools has had such a great impact that the Delhi authorities are looking at introducing the PE curriculum changes across 800 schools. She has certainly made an impact as this quote from a recent thank you letter to Sharon shows. The headteacher from the Lulachi Hansraj Model School wrote, 'We all have been inspired by your unstinting efforts in promoting sports and sports values in different schools of the world and establishing the fact that nations are built not in the classroom but in the playground...Inspired by your plans, we have incorporated a lot of action games and physical activities in our regular curriculum.'
Then on 28 March the British Council, in association with the Government of Andhra Pradesh, held a conference to raise the profile of Physical Education and School Sport. Opened by the Ministers from the Andhra Pradesh regional government and the British Council officials, over 90 primary and secondary school teachers from the area gathered in Osmania University in Medak near Hyderabad to discover how PE and sport can be used to engage and empower young people in schools and the local community and to raise standards in all areas of school life.
Welcoming the VIPs to the conference:
Sharon Kee spoke at the conference as well as David Barnett from the Youth Sport Trust, who has a wealth of experience working on the development of primary school PE for the National School Sport Strategy in England. Sharon shared her successful experience in Delhi supported by Renu, a teacher from Apeejay School. She also did some practical demonstrations with the teachers with some amusing results!
Other contributions to delivering what was a worthwhile event came from UNICEF, who spoke about their interventions in the community and an ex-principal from a school in India spoke about the importance of developing young people as leaders. The conference attendees were then given the opportunity to discuss how they would take things forward in their schools.
The feedback showed how important this event was to the teachers in this region: 'It was very good it can help us and our children to excel in games, sports as well as in academics. Hope that this programme continues successfully for three years. The ideals of the programme are happily being met.' (YH, teacher from Andhra Pradesh)
'This is very good conference to participate in. This type of conference is must conducted in our state thrice in a year, because in our country and also in the state there is no infrastructure and also support from the government side. So this is very good conference and also I am proud to participate in this.' ( TY, teacher from Andhra Pradesh)
Following this success similar conferences will be planned for teachers in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Assam.
Both these initiatives will contribute towards the objectives the International Inspiration programme is seeking to achieve in India:
- To build capacity by enhancing the training of teachers, coaches and volunteers as well as establish new training models for youth leaders within schools and other organisations working in rural communities.
- To support implementation of the Government’s Panchayat based community sport development matrix by piloting viable strategies in selected rural districts.
- To use sport as a means of empowerment for young women and girls and people with disabilities in India.
