Testing for Talent - in Sports and School

Testing for talent - in sports and school

Annette Rasmussen & Lotte Stausgaard Skrubbeltrang

Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Presenter: Annette Rasmussen, , +45 23988872

Oral presentation

Theme: Politics and Policy in Education

Abstract

Much like in the other Scandinavian countries, sports in Denmark springs from mass and popular movements. Thus sport policies in Scandinavia in the post-World War period were driven by social democratic values and mass sports investments. By broadly supporting voluntary organisations, sport policies predominantly followed a sociocultural principle of providing infrastructure for mass sports. From the late 1970s however, investment in elite sports increased considerably, driven by changes that imply an increased focus on competitiveness and national prestige reinforcing tensions between mass and elite sport, and eventually passing legislation to advance elite sports.

In 2005 the first so-called elite sports classes were introduced allowing talented athletes to combine upper-secondary school education (grade 7-9) in Danish public schools with specialised talent development in their chosen sport. The entrance criteria and exams for these sports classes, however, were seen as contradicting the comprehensive principle of the primary school to offer education for all, and sports classes throughout the country have until recently been banned from conducting entrance exams. But the recent school reform not only permits entrance requirements and exams from the school year 2014/2015 it also accepts talented athletes’ incompliances of compulsory education due to elite sport activities.

Our paper concerns the talent development programmes having moved from the world of sport into comprehensive education. We focus on the entrance exams of the sports classes, asking what does the testing for talent mean to pupils between the world of elite sports and the comprehensive school system. In our analysis of this question we draw on data from a two-part analysis of (1) an ethnographic analysis of a particular sports class programme, and (2) an analysis of education policies in regards to talent development since 2005.
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