Everyone remembers the slow, fat or unpopular child left on the sidelines while his mates played rugby or football.

Some may have been that youngster, left wondering why he was made to feel like an outcast.

Many will also recall the teacher who thought it was morale-boosting for pupils to run round a freezing hockey pitch in nothing but a gym skirt and T-shirt.

Brian Cox's tyrannical sportsmaster in the Sixties movie Kes, who refused to end a football match until he had scored the winner, and Brian Conley's sadistic PE teacher in ITV1 sitcom The Grimleys, spring to mind.

However, new statutory guidelines call for PE to be much more inclusive with everyone participating.

Schools are being offered advice applying these principles in a new book, Equity and Inclusion in Physical Education and Sport, written by University of Brighton lecturers Gary Stidder and Sid Hayes.

But does being inclusive come at the expense of competitiveness?

Some fear accommodating weaker team-members could dilute the standards to which more talented young sportsmen and women aspire, threatening to deny the nation future David Beckhams and Jonny Wilkinsons.

Mr Stidder said: "We certainly don't stress the competitive element of PE because we believe PE is more than competition and is different from sport. It is education through the physical.

"The two are very much linked but what we have tried to do is support the two.

"We have tried to look at how we can be more positive."

Tim Barclay, headteacher at Hove Park School, which has just been given a Sportsmark award, went to school in Wolverhampton during the Sixties.

He vividly remembers being made to use an outdoor swimming pool with snow swirling around him.

He said: "We used to change in wooden sheds and then walk from the sheds to the pool in the freezing cold in the middle of winter with nothing but a towel wrapped round us.

"It was at least heated but we had to stand on the side until we were allowed to get in and you could watch the steam rising.

"We were all so desperate to get in."

Mr Barclay said PE had changed immensely with children offered a wider range of sports to enjoy.

Those wanting to go on and compete at a serious level now could while those just wanting to get fit did not have to.

He said: "The competitive element in sport is clear but not everyone is going to be at that level.

"The teams we run are very competitive and they are designed to be the best people. However, a big part of PE is about developing healthy young people so not every lesson has a competitive element."

Trevor Allen, head at Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton, said: "Sport was very important for me. It was mainly football but I played all sports.

"I don't think the system now is perfect but the stereotype featured in Kes is a Sixties stereotype.

"If you were good you got picked and you looked good. If you were not particularly good you were almost made to feel belittled.

"You have to make children feel valued and part of something, not the old model of choosing teams and the fat or spotty ones getting left out. It's cruel, desperately cruel."