“They’re basic cornerstones. All our schools try to teach these through a number of regional opportunities for STEAM learning and the performing arts. In fact, being a member of a large group of schools shows that we are part of a team.”
Dustin Embrey, an athletics specialist for NAE’s regional team in The Americas, said competitive sports shapes “the bigger picture” of a student’s life through the physical, emotional and mental benefits it brings such as valuing exercise for a healthy body and mind and improving one’s self-esteem – aspects that help balance the fast-paced, technology driven and sedentary environment in which we now live. But in this increasingly competitive jobs market, students who participate in sports at school are also learning key skills that are invaluable for when they enter the workforce.
“When you get underneath this further, competitive sports teaches students about leadership, adversity, goal-setting and team building,” Mr Embrey said.
“Such skillsets, when developed at a young age, can be the foundation of a student’s success in both their personal and professional life.”
However, sport should also be prized purely for the joy it brings, according to Collège Champittet’s Managing Director Philippe De Korodi, as it allows for inward reflection.
“It allows our students to understand that real competition is with oneself,” Mr De Korodi said.
”By taking on a particular challenge, focussing, planning, learning from others, training and achieving by measuring ourselves against our own success and failures. But it also gives us that feeling of elation.”