Claire Fox

Andy Murray exited Wimbledon at the end of the Lloyds TSB National School Sports Week (NSSW), a Westminster-backed initiative involving over 10,000 schools throughout England and Wales. With the Olympic Games looming, politicians seem adamant that we need a national sporting renaissance, with Gordon Brown pledging in 2008 to "correct the tragic mistake of reducing the competitive element in school sports". But, despite the admirable rhetoric, I am not convinced by his insistence that we're "doing away with the medals-for-all' culture".

In true bean-counting fashion, whenever government agencies are involved in sport, they conflate quality and quantity. Check out SportScotland's website and weep at the graphs and statistics for every geographic area, breaking down each sport by hours, social class, gender etc. The focus is on "increasing participation", the very same aim as the NSSW.

But participating in what exactly? In case you had visions of athletic prowess on the running tracks and playing fields of Britain, the reality is somewhat different. The flagship mass participation projects during NSSW included: 55,000 school pupils in Staffordshire attempting to break the world skipping record (skipping continuously for three minutes each); Lancashire's schools staged a basic "Wake Up and Shake Up" aerobics routine "suitable for children of all ages and abilities". That's right, remove all the barriers to participation - even if these include lack of ability - and rebrand sport as any activity that sets the bar so low that anyone can join in. Indeed, the NSSW website advises schools to choreograph opening and closing ceremonies using dance, music and drama as a helpful way of including more "non-sporty pupils" and those "who wouldn't normally get involved in physical activity".

Enjoyable though these glorified party games may be, please don't pretend that skipping, aerobics or dance have anything to do with sport. They are merely a form of activity, used for non-sport-related political ends, such as the Scottish Executive's target of making every school "health promoting". How dreary when what passes as sport is yet another policy to combat the alleged obesity "epidemic" or to tick the "social inclusion" box.

But it's also a con. Sport, unlike keep-fit classes, is essentially exclusive. It means the best competing to win, running faster, jumping higher, scoring more goals while the rest - and there's no nice way to say this - are losers. Politicians espouse an educational orthodoxy that views students as fragile creatures in need of protection from such failure.

For those who want real exhaustive competition with genuine sportsmanship, today is the national final of the Institute of Ideas's national Debating Matters Competition. It is an intensely competitive knockout format, and features expert adult judges cross-examining sixth formers from around the country on motions as diverse as "physician-assisted suicide should remain illegal" to "the government should impose limits on bankers' pay".

Since we started the competition, it has often encountered criticism: that it is too tough on pupils; that negative feedback from judges can damage pupils' confidence. We have found the opposite to be true. Pupils appreciate frank assessments of their abilities. Being flattered by adults (regardless of your abilities or performance) is patronising and insults winners and losers alike.

Yes, losing can hurt, but young people are resilient. It's impressive watching the pupils who lose debates dusting themselves off and trying to improve their performance. Debating Matters celebrates that.

In the Debating Matters final, Scotland is represented by Madras College, a comprehensive school in St Andrews, Fife. Let's hope they take their inspiration from ruthlessly competitive Andy Murray rather than the school sports' policy "participation-is-all" bureaucrats. May the best team win.

Claire Fox is the director of the Institute of Ideas