Prior to puberty, there are no significant differences between boys and girls in height, weight, strength or endurance. Therefore, from a physical standpoint, children can participate equitably in all sports and physical activities on a coeducational basis until puberty.
That is the not very surprising conclusion of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Sports Medicine Department that I found when I googled whether there was any significant variation between a boy and girl’s ability to participate in sports at primary school age (up to 11 in the UK).
This fits with what I would have presumed and reinforces the sense of outrage that my primary school teacher friend felt when she was researching tag rugby and found this caveat in the rules:
Taking that there are no significant differences between boys and girls in height, weight, strength or endurance one has to wonder why a girl’s try would be valued at twice the score of a boys.
The stated aim is ‘to encourage greater teamwork’ but it offers no guidance on how having a separate scoring system for young girls than young boys encourages this teamwork. As far as I can see, all it does is highlight a difference between children which, at primary school age, is primarily not there.
I would be interested to hear from other P.E teachers, rugby coaches etc to see I’ve got the wrong end of the stick on this.