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Borough’s youngsters rise to sporting challenge

Vaila Finch
20/12/2005

Football

A FRIENDLY battle between Rochdale primary schools took place last week as part of a scheme encouraging children across the borough to do more sport.

Eleven Catholic primary schools, seven in Rochdale and four from Middleton, took part in a football tournament at St Cuthberts High School, organised as part of the School Sports Partnership Programme.

Year 5 and 6 pupils from St Gabriels, St Vincents, Alice Ingham, Holy Family, St Marys in Littleborough, Sacred Heart and St Johns gave it their all in last week's tournament.

Damian McLachlan, school sports coordinator at St Cuthberts, said: "The overall aim was to improve sport in schools, both in terms of participation and competition.

"It was to include lots of children, get them into the habit of taking part and increase their enjoyment of sport.

"There was really good sportsmanship from everyone and quite a lot of people came to watch too."

The programme is a government initiative put in place in 2000 with the aim of increasing the number of schoolchildren doing two or more hours of sport a week to 75 per cent by 2006.

Damian said: "It is quite an ambitious target when you look at how many minutes we have for sport in the curriculum at the moment .

"We are trying to get children involved in out-of-school-hours activities, so hopefully, if they did not already take part in these kinds of activities, they can now."

As many of the schools involved are 'feeder' schools for St Cuthberts, the day also served as a chance for children to use the facilities at their possible future secondary school.

Stephen Callaghan, deputy headteacher at St Vincents Primary School, said: "It was well-run and the children enjoyed it.

"They like playing other schools. Within the Rochdale area there isn't a league for Year 6 pupils so they are always keen to have the opportunity to play together."

St Cuthberts hope to repeat the tournament next year and introduce other borough-wide sporting activities.