Boxing is back on the school timetable, and no one gets hurt

The school bell is ringing again. Boxing is back in fashion as head teachers turn from the more politically correct pursuits to re-employ the old-fashioned way of fighting the flab, restoring discipline and combating bullying.

Although there has been hardly any boxing in state schools for some years, the tide is turning. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has declared that boxing is "socially beneficial" and the Prime Minister, who we know is not averse to showing a bit of aggression, is also known to be supportive of its return, as is the Sports Minister: "I am very much in favour. This is something we must revisit," says Richard Caborn.

According to Dudley Savill, the secretary of the English Schools ABA, the days when boxing in schools was seen as politically incorrect are vanishing. "For various reasons we are starting to buck the system," he says. Those reasons include a novel approach to being schooled in hard knocks. For no one gets hurt. There isn't a black eye or bloody nose in sight under a scheme called Kid Gloves, backed by the government agency Sportsmatch and equipment manufacturers Pro-Am, which teaches aspirant Alis the rudiments without a punch being landed.

It may be boxing's soft option, but it has become a productive prelude to encouraging youngsters to take up the real thing. There are over 900 entrants, more than for several years, for the national schoolboy championships; the finals take place in Barnsley next weekend. When the association began in 1947, 50,000 regularly entered, and in over 50 years there hasn't been a serious injury.

The battle to get boxing back on the school sports agenda is spearheaded by an unusual pro-am coalition. It includes the new English Schools ABA president, the former general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, John Morris, Britain's leading professional promoter, Frank Warren, a former sports minister, Kate Hoey, plus Jimmy Wray, a former Scottish boxer who is now a Labour MP, and a 92-year-old Catholic priest, Father George Saintsbury.

Fr Saintsbury was chairman of the English Schools ABA for many years and is still actively involved in the organisation of the two-day championships. One of his favourite quotations, which he uses in his programme notes, was originally penned by Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown's Schooldays nearly 150 years ago: "Fighting, rightly understood, is the real, honest business of every son of man".

He is ever ready to biff the anti-boxing brigade. "Young boxers are among the least likely to die from the effects of drugs, joyriding, glue-sniffing and the many other dangers besetting the youth of today," he thunders. "They are too busy trying to get fit for the sport they enjoy. You will never be able to stop fighting among schoolboys. If it is not done in the ring with the gloves on, it will be done, as it always has been, in the playground or behind a shed with the coats off." His sentiments are widely echoed by those now fighting the sport's corner.

Warren says: "When you look at what's going on in Britain today, boxing certainly can't be any worse than kids using knives and guns. All kids are different, some are more aggressive than others, and I am sure that most of us who have been at school could have done with taking up boxing. I think it also helps to teach youngsters to interact. Obviously, if you are to have proper boxing in schools, you need competent ABA coaches, and that is not always going to happen. This Kid Gloves scheme of non-contact boxing is good because it helps channel aggression and can be supervised by PE teachers."

Hoey, always a champion of boxing when she was minister, agrees: "I've seen the benefits of youngsters who otherwise might have been on the streets being involved in boxing. It comes across as an exciting sport, something that is different and builds the individual character."

Inviting the pros and the politicians into the ring was a shrewd tactic by the English Schools ABA, whose director of coaching, Frank O'Sullivan, runs a week's foundation course every year which is always oversubscribed. "The youngsters take part in technique clinics, practising specific moves," he explains. "The younger participants do not actually spar. The tuition involves shadow boxing, bag and pad work, stance, balance, self-defence, mobility, how to throw a straight punch, and how to block punches."

They are taught how to get the maximum leverage and power without actually delivering the proverbial punch on the nose, though many of the youngsters later acquire this ability by joining amateur boxing clubs. Some after-school sessions also feature "Skill Boxing", in which no decision is given.

Last week O'Sullivan organised an experimental group, including 10- to 11-year-olds, at Caslan Primary School, near Birmingham. Out of the class of 46, who had all responded to an announcement about the scheme during their morning assembly, a dozen were girls. It was twice the number of participants anticipated.

The foundation scheme runs parallel to the nationwide Kid Gloves, which is particularly successful in the rougher areas of Bristol and Liverpool. Paul King, a development officer with Liverpool City Council, says that 2,000 youngsters a year take part annually in Kid Gloves, which helped produce three Manchester Commonwealth Games medallists , Paul Smith, Mark Moran and Steven Birch, and a young area schoolboy champion with a familiar Merseyside name, Graham Rooney, the 15-year-old brother of Everton's Wayne; he reached the national quarter-finals.

King says 50 per cent of the enquiries he receives are from the parents of girls, and there are plans to set up an all-girls boxing centre in the area. "There are now eight schools taking part and we've had nothing but accolades from the teachers involved. There is a new breed of teacher now who doesn't have all the old prejudices against boxing. We get them involved in the logistics and aesthetics at teacher training colleges and they appreciate that even this non-contact form, because of the defensive techniques taught, can be an antidote to bullying."

So it's ring-a-ding-ding in the schools again. Round One. Boys and girls come out to flay...