Abstract
The increased emphasis on the pursuit of elite international sporting achievement has inevitably meant that the role of the education system in England and Wales, and schools in particular, in contributing to elite success has been the subject of considerable debate and a focus for government intervention. Yet school sport remains a highly contested policy area subject to pressure from a range of, often competing, sectoral interests such as education, welfare and elite sports development. The focus of this paper is first to consider how the policymaking process for school sport might be theorized and second to illustrate the theorization through an examination f one recent policy initiative: specialist sports colleges. The discussion explores the degree to which the formulation of the specialist sports colleges initiative represented a compromise between competing sectoral interests and also the extent to which competing interests have affected policy during the early stages of implementation.
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