Sport-Focused Education For The Win!

Holistic Sport-Focused Education

To achieve its mission of nurturing Learned Champions With Character, Singapore Sports School is the only local education institution to offer a sport-focused education that integrates sports in all aspects of a student-athlete’s education experience. The sport-focused education offered ultimately aims to build a Champion’s mindset in every student-athlete. The Champion’s mindset refers to a superior mental state that fortifies thoughts, habits and behaviour which will help student-athletes push the boundaries to become a Champion In Sports, Champion For Sports, and Champion In Life.

Sports education is not limited to the training grounds but is included as part of academic curriculum, character and citizenship education, and boarding life.

Using sport in and out of the classrooms has several advantages for the school’s budding sports professionals. Sports is a powerful medium to teach important life lessons and values which student-athletes can apply in their daily lives when they are training, on competitive grounds and their way of life. It is also widely known that sports is important in building character, social development and even communication skills. As keen sports enthusiasts, the use of sports in their daily learning makes education more engaging, interesting, and relatable for student-athletes. It also further builds their interest in sports, and enables them to apply what they have learnt when they are in the sporting arena.

Sports School consciously infuses sports in its daily academic lessons. For lower secondary student-athletes, a sports module is delivered to teach them basic sports science (read story). This module is tailor-made by physical education teachers in the school to ensure that student-athletes have sport science knowledge and skills which would be useful for them to maximise their fitness and sport performance. Day-to-day academic lessons (read story) also use sports examples and scenarios to teach concepts to student-athletes.

During the school’s bi-weekly Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) lessons, sports remains the main medium for values and national education to nurture student-athletes. The school values – Respect, Integrity, Responsibility, Excellence and Resilience – are also imparted using sports examples to help student-athletes understand its importance as sportsmen and to become successful individuals. As part of CCE lessons, Sports School also organises a series of talks from successful sport professionals as part of its Lessons From The Champions series. For Education and Career Guidance, sports professionals are also invited to provide professional advice and insights into careers in the sports industry. Academy Values in Action projects (read story) are also sport-related so that student-athletes can use their talents and abilities to reach out to the community in meaningful ways. Using sport, they are also taught important lessons about empathy and compassion for the community.

Sport has proven to have the power to teach values, life skills, academic lessons and character development. The whole-school approach to integrate sports ensures that student-athletes have a holistic and positive experience at Sports School while building their physical, mental, emotional and overall well-being.