ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Relative Age Effect (RAE). It considers evidence of participation inequalities, exclusion and subtle forms of indirect discrimination that dominate popular youth sports to illustrate how a preoccupation with talent identification and development is impacting upon and changing local-level youth sport participation. Such processes and outcomes highlight direct transgressions of the cross-national Panathlon Declaration (2004), and present challenges when set against national legislation such as the UK Equality Act, 2010. With the aim of responding to RAE-based discrimination and talent development inefficiencies, the final section of this chapter provides macro-to-micro recommendations for ‘positive action’ to posit that the needs of youth must be the central concern and placed ahead of unhelpful adult value systems and outcomes. Considered this way, sport may then be better positioned to play a more facilitative developmental role in the lives of youth.
