I dislike the guiding principles of ‘broad‘ and ‘balanced‘ when it comes to thinking about the PE curriculum and the selection of activities and sports within it. They are vague, they don’t help the design process and they don’t really apply to an individual subject but to a school curriculum (for a nice critical perspective read Colin Richard’s Impact magazine article Broad? Balanced? Curriculum?). However in attempting to remove these principles from people’s thinking I have been met with strong resistance. They are (in PE Departments in England) a sticky concept that has created inertia to more contemporary ways of thinking about PE curriculum design and activity selection. Rather than advocating for binning them, perhaps a better starting point is to consider other options of ‘breadth and balance’ beyond the dominant ideas a range of sports or ensuring each activity area is accounted for.

If…