Combining elite sport and education successfully

It is with some concern that I hear complaints regarding the lack of co-operation by schools in relation to GSSE athletes and their end-of-year exams.

The institution in question this time is the University of Malta and the evident lack of flexibility it offered to the prospective medal winning student-athletes, thus disrupting their training preparations.

As the 2007 Monaco GSSE medal table clearly suggests, the requirements placed on national team athletes in contemporary world sport are such that they need to dedicate themselves more and more to achieving excellence.

When taking into consideration that competition time coincides with the exams period, the student-athlete is left with one or two choices; (i) focus on the academics and compromise the sporting preparation; or (ii) give priority to the sport and suffer the consequences later by either re-sitting the exam or repeating the year.

Keeping in mind the nature of Maltese sports, with its amateur status, the student-athlete has no choice, in fact, but to sacrifice the sport for the sake of education.

Maltese elite athletes are fully aware that they will never earn a living from sport while they stay in Malta and, therefore, forego certain sporting opportunities despite their often burning desire not to do so.

Being a former GSSE gold medallist myself, I know from personal experience how much it means to an athlete to represent his/her home country in a prestigious international sporting event and the pride of winning a medal.

Therefore, forcing the student-athlete to make such a decision is an unnecessary experience.

But let's put this dilemma in perspective and look at the wider context of elite sport and education.

What perhaps we should be aware of is that these issues are not new either to the Maltese context or to the rest of Europe for that matter.

It is only in the past 15-20 years that initiatives have been adopted in Europe favouring the combination of academic and high level athletic activities. The main driving force behind these initiatives was the acknowledgment by various entities of the rising pressures that student-athletes have to cope with in order to balance their academic and sporting commitments.

Being an elite athlete has become increasingly more demanding at a time when training volume and frequency of competition have clearly intensified. This has immediate implications on the lifestyle of the athlete in terms of time management.

So, it has started to be acknowledged that educational establishments have a role to play in this regard and should as much as possible seek to tailor their programmes to cater for the needs of elite athletes.

(For further information one can refer to the European Commission project which my colleagues and I at the Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy, at Loughborough University, were commissioned to produce in 2004 - 'The Education of young sportspersons' available on the net at www.sportdevelopment.org.uk/euschoolsport2004.pdf).

This point was reiterated by the German Presidency during the European Workshop entitled "Dual Career - Balancing top-level sport, education and occupational career" in Stuttgart this year. It argued for state governments and the European Commission itself to be more pro-active with regards to supporting elite athletes through education and eventually employment.

Flexibility on the part of educational institutions in regard to the athletes featured high on the agenda and various examples of how these systems work, were presented.

Full-time education

Elite athletes have started to specialise more and more at an earlier age and, therefore, by default most are still in full-time education.

Shining examples are young athletes of the likes of Ella Fleri Soler, Sean and Benji Borg but I am sure that Maltese sport has other emerging talent waiting for the right opportunity to make their mark.

But, it seems, to date the Maltese Olympic Committee is still powerless to influence the decisions made by educational institutions.

This is why I urge the central government to take a lead in this situation and negotiate with educational establishments to take special measures to accommodate elite athletes' needs.

Countries like France and Spain, who have these measures enshrined in legislation, have shown one way forward which reflects the nation's sporting interest. With the limited financial resources being invested in the development of sport we must do our utmost to support our athletes in any reasonable way possible.

We cannot continue to ask our athletes to make huge efforts without offering them something to ensure that they have more equal access to educational opportunities.