Good idea, but, more thought needed.

The government plans to arrange school Olympics to reintroduce competitiveness into our schools. Can't say I blame them, though I do wonder why it is that politicians have to meddle so much with education, I suspect it's because it's all they have left to meddle with, the EU pretty much runs everything else.

Telegraph.

As the fall-out from England’s World Cup defeat continues, the Government insisted the reintroduction of highly-competitive sports days and inter-school tournaments would help push children “to be the best” when they grew up.

Under new plans, schools will be expected to compete against each other in an Olympics-style event, covering sports such as football, athletics, rugby, swimming, tennis and cycling. 

Some £10m will be spent creating a local league structure for primary and secondary schools. Winning teams will compete in 60 county finals before going on to a national final.

Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, insisted the move would “get rid of this myth that competitive sport is bad for children”.

“We have to realise that sport is a good thing,” he said. “It does not damage your self-esteem, it helps to strengthen your self-esteem because sport is often about picking yourself up, which is what I guess we are doing today [after England's World Cup exit].”

He added: "Sport - whether you win or lose - teaches young people great lessons for life. It encourages teamwork, dedication and striving to be the best that you can be."

But the move has been criticised by head teachers who said it risked being derailed because of a lack of money and the amount of time spent preparing for exams.

First off, something has to give in the education "industry" the Labour obsession with exams and weird citizen/sexual/environmental education policies has to go. They were never necessary and took up time that could have been spent actually teaching kids something useful (No, learning about global warming climate change and carbon isn't, nor is exploring "alternative" lifestyles) these were something that only a left winger could come up with and were viewed as cultural imbecility by most normal people, but as schools and the ministry of education were mostly filled with left wing doctrinaires in key positions, there you go.
Also needing to go would be SAT's, they aren't necessary and take too much time, let teachers teach, not prepare kids for exams, at least not until they actually need them.
Better yet, get the state out of education, simply have business and industry leaders tell school exam boards what they are looking for and have the exams when they leave set up accordingly. Hint literacy and numeracy good, citizenship useless. The Swedes showed us the way to go on this, it works well, so lets copy it.
Yes competitiveness is a good thing for kids to learn, that there are winners and losers and how to cope with victory and defeat, it teaches you about life. That was wrecked by socialist education theories where there were no winners or losers and left kids very unprepared for real life once they got out into the world.
Get rid of all the political rubbish, get rid of the idiot exam culture and get back to simply filling kids heads with knowledge, the system will sort itself out quite quickly.

Then and only then, will teachers have the time to do other stuff like school Olympics