ABSTRACT
British physical education is gendered in ideology, content, teaching methods and through its relationships with the wider dance and sports contexts. The Physical Education Association, in its response to the Interim Report of the Physical Education Working Group, supported the comments made in the short section on equal opportunities in the Report, and recommended that equal opportunity should be seen as a leading and guiding principle for physical education. Structuring learning experiences on the basis of equality of opportunity is inherently good educational practice, and it assumes that children are more important than the subject matter to be taught. While equality of opportunity is enshrined in the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and in Department for Education policy, and now within the proposals of the Secretaries of State for physical education in the National Curriculum, the way in which the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA) is framed in relation to sport has given rise to a number of confusing anomalies.
