Are school sports a thing in Europe?

7 comments

1. Not in the same way, with school teams competing at a high level. But physical education is a key part of compulsory education in Denmark.

   *Idræt*(Formerly called *gymnastik*) as PE. is called in Danish, runs all 10 years of compulsory education, age ~6-16. It focuses not on one sport, but on a wide variety of sports, athletic disciplines, dance, and general exercise. The curriculums for different age groups reflect what is expected of children of that age to be able to handle, in terms of physique, understanding of rules and so-on. While there are requirements to learn or partake in individual performances, such as with javelin-throwing or high-jumps, the main focus generally is on team sports.

   *But:* unlike in the US, schools don’t tend to make school teams that compete in leagues with other schools, in what appears to be a semi-professional or pseudo-professional manner. At most, schools partake in things like *Skole OL* where different classes compete, as a team, against other classes from other schools, or local schools might arrange their own internal tournaments.

   The whole culture of team-names, mascots, pep-rallies, and so-on, we don’t have.

   Youth sports are overall, divorced from the education sector, and mainly run as volunteer associations, which, sometimes, grow into professional teams.

2. Well here in Scotland football and rugby are quite big things for schools, not the same as in the USA usually someone will play for their school teams as more of a side thing, but also play for the town/cities local football/rugby club(s) as their main thing as scouts for professional teams tend to only go to the local teams and not the school ones plus pretty much no one will go watch the school games except maybe parents or relatives

3. Only in a non-serious way. A sports day once a year, maybe an after school football team that plays other local schools. But nothing along the lines of the US where they seem to have an actual stadium with parents and students coming along cheering, with the players trying to get into a college afterwards. The really good footballers, runners etc would most likely play for local clubs.

4. When I was at secondary school, we had one compulsory 40-minute physical education lesson each week and one compulsory 80-minute games lesson each week from ages 12 to 16. For ages 16 to 18 there was no compulsory PE or sports. So it definitely wasn’t an essential part of our education. You had to take a certain number of subjects to study and PE could be one of those, so for the pupils who did that, it would be a much bigger part of their education and something they were graded on.

   There were also after-school sports clubs but these were pretty casual affairs – we would play basketball or badminton or something amongst ourselves with little-to-no supervision from the PE teacher. The head of PE was into field hockey so we had a competitive field hockey team that got actual coaching, though it wasn’t as intense as American school sports seem to be.

5. We have a subject which is called “sports” and gets graded. But nothing like of the whole school spirit and school teams competing against each other.

   Those things get outsourced in local sport clubs/leagues.

6. A very unfortunate thing in Germany. Not 100% sure about today because it’s been years since I was in school and Covid changed a lot of things, but each year starting from elementary school we had at least 2 hours of physical education per week and it was 2h of exercising with very little breaks. We were also forced to compete in track and field each year despite everyone hating it.

   And of course we had after school soccer, volleyball and handball teams which competed with other schools, but you can absolutely not compare it to sports teams in the US. Nobody except close friends and parents showed up to those games (if a game even had viewers at all), no mascots, no parties. Basically: nobody gave a damn about it.

   There are of course also schools which let you pick sports as subject for your Abitur diploma and these poor souls had to put in way more hours than just the 2 everyone else had to suffer through.

7. Within the Swedish speaking schools there is an event called “Stafet karnevalen” which is basically just a track and field competition between schools around the country. Usually kids are quite pumped for it, especially in elementary school as it means a day off. But usually those teams are just the fastest kids going and some reserves, and a cheering team from each school. It isn’t anything all that serious, but some take it a little too seriously within the schools. It’s not like you can get a scholarship through it or anything, but the winning schools usually win something like tablets for the school and a years bragging rights. Football, as in what you call soccer, does have some championships. Although those are very small events.

   Other than that, no. School sports aren’t a big thing. The only teams that do end up being big are ones that are part of sports clubs or national teams. And even then, it tends to be more national than international. Unless it’s soccer, at which point it becomes worldwide. But we never really get there. Hockey on the other hand, does produce some internationally recognizable players. So do motorsports. Although lately we’ve been lagging a bit behind on getting more world champions. Here’s hoping we get far in hockey again when the world series comes around.