Amid tinny renditions of God Save the Queen, Olympic medals have been draped over the necks of Team GB with pleasing regularity over the past fortnight.
Two things have tended to dominate Olympic discourse in the UK among educators. One is where the competitors went to school - specifically state versus independent (Yes, Millfield educates a lot of Olympians. If a state school offered massive scholarships to elite children and educated them amid world-class facilities and coaches, might it do quite well?).
The second is whether the UK’s investment in the Olympics bears wider lessons for public policy. Team GB’s success, it goes, reflects years and years of targeted public investment, combined with a nurturing of talent, a strong collaborative ethos and a broad recognition of the benefit of sport.
If only more public policy - including education - could run more like this, we’d be winning Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) golds regularly.
It is, therefore, worth looking at how the Olympic funding for Team GB actually operates.
And to adopt an internet meme, I don’t think this system works the way you think it works.
At the heart of the funding model is something called the “No Compromise” strategy.
What this means is that you only get funded as a sport if there is a realistic possibility that you will secure medals in four or eight years’ time. Nothing else matters. There is no “value added”.
To advocate the Olympic model, one would be suggesting that ministers fund schools not on a per-pupil basis, and certainly not with additional funding for deprivation
There is no recognition that some sportspeople have further to progress. There is no value to widening participation (though other organisations exist to fund this). If your sport is deemed likely to get medals - based in large part on whether you got some last time - you’ll be funded. If not, tough. Come back when you’re better.
The result of this is a “Matthew effect” (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer): there is a concentration of funds on those sports already the most successful.
In this funding round of 2013-17, UK Sport invested £275 million in 20 sports. Rowing, cycling and sailing - easily Britain’s most successful - received £87 million between them, or a third of the total funding. Volleyball and handball, which underperformed in London, got nothing. Basketball, which is the second largest participation sport in the entire country, ditto.
This is precisely the opposite way to the system by which school funding works. To advocate the Olympic model, one would be suggesting that ministers fund schools not on a per-pupil basis, and certainly not with additional funding for deprivation.
It would involve working out which schools were likely to do best in GSCEs or A levels, and taking cash from underperforming schools to give to these high achievers. No accounting would be made for academic or social background of pupils, nor the extra efforts by some schools to close the gap. No money would be put into facilities in areas of higher need.
A system where the main priority is top performance by an elite is a strategy pursued by some countries - particularly the US. But it is a long way away from where England operates now.
Jonathan Simons is a former head of education in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Gordon Brown and David Cameron
@PXEducation
