SEVERAL District representatives for the National Schools Championships do not think that schools place enough emphasis on or support towards sports, which places an added strain on the respective Districts when the athletes go to Nationals.

Speaking with Chronicle Sport the District reps remarked that many schools see the inter-house and inter-school, and Nationals, more of a “distraction” than as an essential part of school life, and would hardly put systems in place to accommodate students who wish to support the events.
“Some schools are not sports-inclined and they don’t really see sports as important. For example, some schools in our district will have school when we have Inter-school, just the athletes will go to the sports, so that alone tells you the thinking of the headteachers.
Once you are having sports the entire school should be there supporting their colleagues because the motivation from the supporters will be very good,” voiced one District rep.
Another District rep urged that the school needs to understand the benefit of sports noting that: “At the end of the day you can’t only be looking at the book aspect. At the end of the day you need a well-rounded individual.”
The sports rep pointed out that the lack of interest shows up when an athlete has talent and is able to make it to Nationals. The schools do nothing to train the athletes but leaves it up to the District to train ms.
This becomes difficult for the District which does not get a preliminary period to train athletes before Nationals. They are calling for more active Physical Education teachers.
“Taking a team to Nationals you have to train the athletes to do things after the Champion of Champions. We should not have to do that.
A lot of athletes come to inter-school not knowing the basics of the events but the teacher just pushed them. The teacher said, ‘We have to get somebody to jump so you just go jump’. They need more emphasis on the physical education part of the school curriculum.”
Schools need more PE teachers. And if you have the PE teachers in the schools systems they need to work with the students before they come to Inter-school.”
However, at least one representative for a District outside of Georgetown noted that when it comes to sports in their District schools are very supportive and would always put measures in place to accommodate athletes who have to take time off from school to participate in sports.
Moreover, they report that when inter-school sports is held there is always overwhelming support from the schools, parents and community.
Nonetheless in other parts where things are not so well off, reps believe that the change needs to start at the Ministry of Education level. There was a renewed call for the ever-so-long-awaited sports policy
“The Ministry is a whole other story,” one District rep lamented, “They need to probably have the sports policy in place in the sense where they let everyone know that sports is important. Most administrators don’t view sports as important. They simply view it as a distraction, or a way to hurt people’s head in a sense. But once the administrators know the importance of sports, that’s when we will get the change.”
In 2015 the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport was absorbed as a Department under the Ministry of Education, being touted as one of many steps to see the importance of sports and culture in schools being emphasised.