HALLELUJAH with jolly great big knobs on. At last politicians have seen sense and delivered one in the eye for the barmy politically correct brigade.

The new Government says it will reverse the trend of farcical school sports where everybody and nobody is a winner, and bring back competition.

It hopes to reinvigorate school sport and foster a culture of excellence. It will be goodbye to inclusion for all and pass the bean bag and acknowledgement that life is about winners and losers, whether we like it or not.

I don’t suppose Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Chris Hoy and Dame Kelly Holmes got armfuls of medals practising pass the bean bag gently to the next child until the music stops when they were young.

Under the new plan, schools will be expected to compete against each other and there will be an Olympics-style event while £10 million is to be spent on a local league structure for primary and secondary schools. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt says it will “get rid of the myth that competitive sport is bad for children”.

Fewer than one third of pupils currently take part in regular competitive sport within schools and fewer than one in five is involved in regular competition between schools. Need anyone wonder why obesity levels in the young are a national disgrace.

A whole new ethos is needed if we are to emerge from a generation of kids who would rather play violent computer games in their bedrooms than participate in sport.

School sports days have gone from a pleasure to a pain for many teachers who have had to stand around holding sun cream and bottles of water in case poor lambs could not cope with the 25 yards egg and spoon race without collapsing.

It got so ridiculous that even games of conkers in the playground were banned in case children were injured by the flying remnants of a vinegar-pickled twenty-niner.

I was never much good at sport when I was at school. A third in the potato race was about the best I could do. And even then the only other kid in the race stopped to tie up his shoe lace and run to his mum for a cuddle before narrowly succumbing by a short head to my final wobbly lunge for the line.

My secondary school was very sporty. Unfortunately I was the original seven-stone weakling. The one from the Charles Atlas adverts who got sand kicked in his face by the muscular chap who had curvaceous girls in figure-hugging swimsuits queuing for his attentions.

Poor eyesight didn’t help when it came to avoiding the big lads at rugby and even to this day I can’t perform a somersault without dislocating numerous parts of my anatomy. Eventually I just gave up trying to climb the ropes in the gym, and vaulting over the wooden box only led to several painful blows amidships.

But sport must teach you some good lessons in life. Subsequent to my school days I played football, took up fell running, had a go at tennis, squash and badminton and learned to treat those twin imposters triumph and disaster — though mainly disaster it must be admitted — equally.

I accept that we’re all different. Some kids and sport simply don’t get on. We had one tubby lad at school who was a brilliant academic, but hopeless at games. So hopeless he was excused sports days. He went on to become a distinguished bishop.

After England’s dismal World Cup exit, sport in this country needs a lift. We need to get back to the view that excellence is not a dirty word.

Some teachers complain that they are under enough pressure already without having to devote time to extra-curricular sport.

However, if the Government can pull this one off and bring back proper sport into our schools it deserves to stand on the winner’s podium. And maybe, in a few years’ time, we won’t be seeing our sports teams slinking back to these shores in disgrace.

THE DESTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE

IT’S not only sport that seems has suffered in the world of education.

Perhaps the Internet and text speak have got something to do with our national inability to spell or master the basic tenets of grammar.

I opened a tub of a well-known spread the other day only to be confronted by the statement that my heart could be a different age to me. One of the first lessons my old English teacher “Charlie” Evans taught was how to differ from and compare to.

Only this week the chairman of one of our biggest national companies condemned education standards as a disgrace after receiving thousands of job applications from “illiterate” school-leavers, Nearly a quarter of the 27,000 applications for apprenticeships were not even worthy of consideration.

Even Prince Charles, when not plying foreign governments with his views on architecture, warned last year that the “timeless principles” of teaching were in danger of being lost.

Furthermore, former Tory minister John Redwood says that some of the people who write asking if they can become political assistants cannot even string a sentence together.

Youngsters are being robbed of their cultural heritage as schools downgrade history, geography and English literature in favour of what are seen as easier options.

Wherever you look these days you will spot glaring spelling mistakes and grammatical disasters. Just study the average public house menu board.

There seems to be an idea that, as long as you can make yourself understood, that’s all you need.

Traditional subjects might not be as fashionable as citizenship and sustainability, but schools are turning out far too many youngsters who haven’t got a basic grasp of literacy.

This idea that it is “good enough” won’t do. A drive to improve standards of literacy is long overdue. A think tank recently came up with the idea of teaching primary school children Latin. One can’t help thinking they should concentrate on teaching them English first.

PRESIDENTIAL PROBLEMS

NEVER be tempted to pin too much faith in hope, the feathered creature that perches in the soul. After all England’s “golden generation” of footballers fell off their perch disastrously.

And on the other side of the pond President Obama, who many of us prematurely hailed as the saviour of the western world, also turns out to have feet of clay. So much so that recently a critic of the president put him in the Jimmy Carter class of ineffectiveness.

We can only hope that Obama gets his act together soon, otherwise the main achievements of his term of office could turn out to be quitting smoking and lowering his golf handicap.

DON’T FORGET YOUR FIRST RESPONSIBILITY

ALL jovial bluster, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke told Radio 4’s Today program this week about the sudden conversion of the “nasty” party into a bunch of social workers hoping to reform criminals who would otherwise be languishing in prison.

What he seemed to be saying was that shorter jail sentences could in future be replaced by community sentences. And that means shoving the responsibility on to the voluntary and charity sectors.

Prison is a university of crime, we know that. A vast percentage of jailbirds go on to reoffend within 12 months of their release. But the alternative all seems rather woolly. Is this the influence of the Liberals on the party which, only a few years ago under Michael Howard, was of the bang ‘em up and hang ‘em high philosophy?

Clearly there are big faults with the present system. But this sounds like a kneejerk reaction. The traditional government of law and order needs to remember that, for all its high ideals of putting offenders to work in the community, its first priority is the protection of the public. It just seems rather strange to have to remind a Conservative politician of that.