You can access my slides on Low Cost, High Impact Professional Learning from researchED Aberdeen (11th May, 2024) here.

A tribute to my father-in-law, Dr Ansar Skandary.

Unusually, this piece is not about my professional life, but my personal life. It was driven by a desire to put something into words for my own children. Unlike my professional blogs it will not be actively advertised or shared, but will just sit here waiting for anyone to read it who will find some value in it; it is about memory, loss, grief, love and appreciation. Fundamentally, I just felt that it was a story that needed to be put into words.

I’m sitting in my father-in-law’s flat in the summer of 2022, three months after he died. He lived just outside the European quarter in Brussels, in one of those huge apartment blocks that the city has in abundance. The street below is always busy and noisy; tonight there is a party going on nearby with plenty of loud voices, even though it’s Sunday night in the middle of a severe heatwave. Yet up here on the 10th floor, that noise seems very distant. 

Dr Skandary’s flat is small, even cramped. You get here via a lift that says it can hold nine people but in reality it’s four. There is one bedroom, a decent sized living room, a galley kitchen and a box room that served as a dining room which, at a squeeze, could get eight people around the table. Yet despite its size, I adore it. The decor is uniquely his own (the walls are all bright red), and reflects two passions: his family, and his love of hospitality. There are photos placed everywhere, many of them showcasing his life in the 60s and 70s. The view out of the windows looks west across the city, and lends the flat a feeling of space and perspective that it would otherwise lack if lower down the building. I feel totally at ease here; I feel just as strongly about this cosy flat as I do about my childhood home. I first set foot here sixteen years ago, and of all the places that have meant something in my life this association has been the longest. I have many happy memories, and it saddens me greatly to think this is the last time I will be here. 

Dr Skandary’s life was far from ordinary. Born in Afghanistan just after the Second World War, he set out for Paris as a young man to study geology at the Sorbonne. He stayed on to complete his doctorate there, and he married my wonderful mother-in-law Mahmooda (a woman who has an equally incredible biography). Their honeymoon was an epic road trip, driving from Paris to Kabul. They made it all the way to the Iran-Afghanistan border where the import taxes on their car meant they had to abandon it and complete the voyage on public transport. Imagine doing that journey now. 

Dr Skandary rose through the ranks of government and was a minister during the 1980s when the socialist, pro-Soviet administration fought the Mujahideen. Almost all western histories of this period speak of the Soviet (or Russian) ‘invasion’ of Afghanistan in 1979, but Dr Skandary and his family don’t see it this way. They argue that the Afghan government invited Russian forces in to fight narrow-minded (and US-armed) religious fanatics. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, a brutal civil war between various factions in the Mujahideen led to the rise of the Taliban, so it is perhaps a period worth revising. After all, which western historians talk of the American ‘invasion’ of Vietnam? 

Dr Skandary held on for two more years after the Russians withdrew, but life in Kabul became too dangerous to endure. The Mujahideen had a tactic of kidnapping and torturing the children of government ministers, and with four yong children it was a risk he could not take. In 1991, he took his family to Delhi, departing with a single suitcase each. It was meant to be temporary, but he returned to Kabul a few weeks later to pack up the rest of their belongings. He found their apartment in Mikrorayon had been ransacked, and anything of value was gone. He returned to India, and would never again set foot in his beloved Afghanistan. His decision to leave was fully justified by the horrific death of his final boss, President Najibullah, in 1996, despite UN protection.¹

Two years later the family moved to Russia, living a risky existence as illegal immigrants in a state that was transitioning from communism to capitalism. My wife remembers queuing for hours as a child for bread, but also her father taking her to McDonald’s in Moscow. From being a government minister with a limousine and driver at his beck and call, he was now working in a street market to support his family. Six years in both Moscow and St Petersburg followed, desperately trying to survive. Yet despite this poverty, many friends and family remember how generous he was helping others, and in exile he remained a central figure in the Afghan diaspora. 

In the late 1990s he and his wife were granted, at separate times, political asylum in Belgium because they were Francophone. They were finally reunited, as a family of six, in a one-bedroom apartment in Brussels. It seemed that finally they had some stability and security, and their children could go to school. He worked for the Belgian government, vetting asylum applications because many non-Afghans tried to game the system by claiming to be from Afghanistan. He interviewed them to see if their claims were legitimate or not. This was his last work in life, which seems an extraordinary waste of talent for someone who was awarded a doctorate by the Sorbonne and signed international treaties and trade agreements on behalf of his government. 

I first met him in 2006, in the same room that I am writing this piece, when I asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He spoke Dari and French perfectly, but not English, so I had been to night school to reprise my secondary school French to ensure that I passed the test. Somehow, mercifully, I did. We became good friends, and I can honestly say that we never had a crossed word. He was always the life and soul of the party, dressed to kill, playing the gregarious diplomat at every family gathering and wedding, but it was in his own apartment that I thought he was at his best. 

His cooking was legendary. His speciality was an Afghan dish called laandy pulao, which (if you’re a purist) involves dry-curing lamb for weeks before cooking it in copious amounts of rice. It’s a dish that very few people can cook, and I may never experience it again. There was always a ritual to visiting his home. The entrance, the formal welcome, the apératif, the food, the ‘bon cafe’ digestif on the sofa next door, and the leisurely catching up as the afternoon stretched lazily on. That same pattern, that familiarity, was a constant joy to me. I always knew what to expect when I visited him; this included reproaching me for letting my French slip, before being complimented for (somehow) making progress by the end of our visit a few days later. 

We had a shared love of football, politics, good whisky, and philosophy. Although he was a man of science by training, he always talked about the broad principles of life. What makes a person good and honest was a frequent topic of conversation. I knew full well that he was educating me and setting out his expectations at the same time, but I appreciated that greatly. It was just what I hoped to get out of my relationship with my father-in-law. 

He was a convinced socialist through and through. Not long after we first met, my parents came to Brussels to meet him and we went for a walk in the city. As we passed a mosque, my father (a presbyterian minister and RE teacher) asked him if he was a frequent visitor there. He simply said “Jamais. Je suis un socialiste.” He observed the rituals of Islam when the occasion called for it, but he was absolutely secular. I could never place him exactly in terms of his politics, but if I had to try I would say he was not a million miles from Nehru. 

I got a small taste of what his political modus operandi was like when my wife and I had our Afghan wedding in Cologne in 2008. We had to visit the wedding centre (a venue popular with Afghans and Turks in the west of Germany) to negotiate the details and the price. I sat next to him and just watched, making constant mental notes, as he did all the talking. Over several rounds of tea, and with a mixture of bonhomie and steel, he induced the management to offer the very best service at the lowest possible price. He had a particular talent for showing his disapproval in his body language, but not his words. It was masterly. And after all, he knew he had a strong bargaining position. He was still a significant name in the Afghan diaspora. To give a specific example, when my wife went to the Afghan embassy in Brussels to apply for work experience, she was asked to give her name. When she said ‘Skandary’, they immediately said “Ah, you must be Dr Skandary’s daughter!” Any attempt at achieving anything on her own merit has always been difficult because of this.

He was very conscientious about his health. He swam regularly (I tried and failed to keep pace with him once – let’s put that one down to youthful naivety) and he walked for two hours every evening. Afghans have a saying that “sightseeing is sightseeing, but getting lost is still sightseeing.” When my wife was little he told her that she should walk everywhere to learn her surroundings and should always pay attention to the names of the streets. It is a habit I have picked up from him, and I recommend it to everyone. It helps you to know where you are, and where you are going. 

He seemed indefatigable to me, yet he succumbed to a heart attack not long after being admitted to hospital during a visit to see his brothers in Denmark, suffering from high blood pressure. I last saw him in October 2019, and that gap was down to COVID; our next scheduled trip in April 2020 was cancelled, and it never crossed my mind that the forced separation of that period would mean that we would never see each other again.

After his funeral in Copenhagen in April 2022, we had a family get together and it was a strange occasion. It felt as though he was there; I always expected to see him as I went from one room to another. At the end of the evening we watched a reel of photographs of him over the years, and it was a trigger to my grief. It came in powerful waves. The enormity of what I – we – had lost suddenly came over me and I couldn’t control it. He had had that effect on many more people besides me. 

So now I sit here in his flat for the last time, putting down some thoughts for posterity. This is mainly for his five surviving grandchildren, only one of whom will retain any memories of him into adulthood. He was by no means perfect, but he owned his imperfections. His passing was marked by a wave of loyalty and affection from the hundreds of attendees at his funeral, some coming from very far away. 

Having lost my own father ten years ago, I am still processing the loss of my second father. As with all important relationships, the memories live for many years afterwards. I read recently that great people die twice; the first death is physical, and the second is when their legacy ceases to be remembered. I think that Dr Skandary’s second passing will be a long time coming.

Rest in peace, Baba Jan. 

1  I should add that my wife’s family has the utmost respect for President Najibullah. If this period interests you, follow Heela Najibullah on Twitter. My wife met her recently at a conference for the Afghan diaspora and it was a rare case of meeting your idol and not being disappointed. 

This is the second blog about a visit to Denmark to learn about education and the provision of sport and physical activity. The first blog is about the school system and provides more context for this piece.

For the past two years I’ve been investigating the future of sport and physical education. If we’re going to improve the wellbeing of young people, and indeed all of society, then sport and physical fitness have a central role to play. As part of this process I’ve been talking to various people from the Observatory for Sport Scotland, a think-tank that provides research and organises events to inform public debate and policy making. When I asked about best practice outside the UK, I was told that Denmark was well worth visiting. What follows is my learning from a trip to see Landsstævne, and I’m very grateful to Charlie Raeburn from OSS for arranging various meetings for me with key people in Danish sport and education. 

The Sports Analysis Institute (IDAN)

One of the key elements in Danish sport is the Danish Institute for Sports Studies (IDAN), which is a think tank that is funded by the Ministry of Culture, but has significant autonomy. It began in 2005 and is responsible for the Danish Institute for Non-Formal Education (Vifo) and also the Play the Game conference. Play the Game is fascinating; founded in 1997, it looks at ethical issues and controveries like doping and gambling, and it views sport as a vehicle for democracy. Attendees are typically investigative journalists, academics and policy makers. 

IDAN was instrumental in the creation of the Observatory for Sport Scotland. In fact, Henrik Brandt, who spent many years working at IDAN and now runs his own consultancy, was involved in OSS from the start. We have a long way to go in Scotland to provide the same level of community engagement and infrastructure that Denmark has, but if we’re going to get there OSS has a central role to play. OSS has no public funding, unlike IDAN, so in many ways we’re fortunate that it exists at all.

The Role of Sports Clubs – DGI

DGI is an organisation that covers a wide range of sports clubs across Denmark. For a country of 5.8 million people, it is incredible that DGI supports 6,400 member clubs across 14 regions. That’s a staggering 1.65m Danes who are affiliated to a local club with DGI membership, about a quarter of the population. Danes spend on average 800 euros a year on sport and physical fitness, and the sector is worth about 2% of GDP. This network of clubs is run by around 100,000 volunteers which underscores the Danish emphasis on community. In fact, if you look at DGI’s values you see that ‘a sense of community’ is first on the list. Volunteering is so important that Mogens Kirkeby, vice president of DGI, told me that “if you lose one volunteer you lose ten participants. If you gain one volunteer, you gain ten more people.”

DGI is a big organisation; it has an annual turnover of 90 million euros and supports physical activity for all ages, which is vital in a society that values life-long engagement in sport and wellbeing. That starts early; some 80% of Danish children will become a member of a sports club before before the age of 12. This isn’t even the whole picture; in addition and complementary to DGI there is DIF, the association of 62 national governing bodies, which represents a total over 9,000 clubs. Most clubs are affiliated to both DIF (historically representing English sport) and DGI (historically representing rural gymnastics). An example of this is the football club IF Lyseng which has 1,700 members.

The International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA)

Mogens is also President of ISCA which has its headquarters in Copenhagen. It began in 1995 and is an international network of 260 sporting organisations across 89 countries on all continents. The values that are inherent in Danish sport can also be seen in ISCA, such as the idea that sport is a driver of community and democracy. It provides support and advocacy for members around their core purpose of “moving people”. It is a broad umbrella group that is really about physical activity, so organised sport is a subset of that. Through ISCA, Denmark exports its philosophy of wellbeing and thought leadership around the globe. One of the most consistent beliefs I came across was the importance of exchanging ideas for the common good. 

The Role of the State and Governing Bodies

It’s worth noting the role that the state plays in this. There is autonomy for the various organisations described here, but there is significant state funding for DGI and the national governing bodies (see part 1 about Danish boarding schools and the folk school movement). The commitment to sport as a part of national wellbeing, and the multi-party support for funding this, is central to the national philosophy of creating a sense of belonging and civil participation. Local authorities are charged with supporting clubs for children and youth and through access to or subsidies for local sports facilities, and this is all enshrined in legislation. For example, all state schools must make their facilities available to clubs after the end of the day and throughout weekends and holidays. Local authorities have also been tasked with providing support for marginalised communities to get involved.

In my visit to Oure School I saw two interesting examples of this. One was the Danish Football Association’s funding for their impressive new football facility. Yet there was also a contrary example. Their golf programme was struggling so they approached the national governing body for guidance and support, and got nothing back. What did they do? They turned their hand to other sports that did get buy-in, in this case mountain-biking and sailing. If you look carefully at the shape of the building in this photo of Oure’s biking centre, you can see what it used to be – a golf driving range.

There is a salutary lesson here for governing bodies everywhere; ignore the grass roots at your peril. And for schools, Michael Sørensen was very clear about the significance of values. “The first thing you should ask a governing body is about their values. If they align with yours, you can work with them.”

Landsstævne

DGI runs an event every four years called Landsstævne. This is a huge sports meeting that lasts for a week and in 2022 the turnout was 25,000, which put quite a demand on the town of Svendborg and its population of 27,000. Of the attendees some 50% are under the age of 23, so this is a real mixture of children and adults. The oldest participants were in their 80s. 

Landsstævne means ‘gathering’ and the first one to take place in Denmark was in 1935 at Ollerup (which is a short distance from Svendborg). That attracted 14,000 people who built a village consisting of 1,000 tents. Sports that were offered back then included handball, football, gymnastics, swimming, diving and folk dancing. Those are all still part of the modern Landsstævne, but of course it has evolved – there are 30 sports on offer and eSports are now a big attraction. This is really a ‘grassroots Olympics’ and similar festivals can be found in Germany, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. The traditions that underpin these events go back to the early 19th century when such organised physical activity was actually seen as a challenge to the state, until eventually it became a fundamental part of civil society. 

A key part of the philosophy of Landsstævne is that people play against each other in these sports, but there are no medals or trophies. There is no podium. It is simply about the joy of being active and competing for fun. There is no structure to the games, in the sense of a draw or a league, it’s just about signing up to get involved and challenging another club or team to a match. There were over 700 football matches played this week and not a single prize was handed out. I was told, quite simply, that “you are not honoured by winning.” Danes really do see sport as a form of democracy, and this is what it looks like in practice. 

The culmination of Landsstævne is a performance by 5,700 pupils from 60 boarding schools across the country (for the Danish approach to boarding, which is very different to the UK, see part 1 of this blog). They were accompanied by no fewer than 739 teachers. This event is their Year 9 and 10 (i.e. age 15-17) graduation. They perform an incredible hour-long set of live instrumental music, singing, dancing, and gymnastics in front of an audience of over 10,000 people in a circular arena. The fact that there is no such thing as a ‘best seat in the house’ again takes you back to the democratic values that underpin all of this. The arena is more or less the same size and structure as it was in the 1930s, sitting on a big bank of earth that was made by volunteers. 

The performance is incredible; I have no idea how you would go about choreographing something on this scale. There are dozens of routines and several costume changes. At the end, a video is played on the big screens on the stage of the week that the teenagers have had. They stand around, arm in arm, watching with a mixture of smiles and tears at the friendships they have made. Rather than take a curtain call and bask in the glory, they instead share a moment of community before departing the arena. As we leave, I can hear them all over the bank cheering and shouting at what they have achieved together. 

Reflection: Creating Communities and the Centrality of Values

We talk a lot about values but we are faced with the ever present challenge of praxis. How do we take core values and turn them into practice in what we do in sport? My main takeaway from Denmark was exactly that. The ethos and philosophy that drives what Danes do has been developed for around 200 years and is reflected in the structures at government and grassroots level. The world was deeply moved by Danish footballers standing around Christian Eriksen on the pitch at the Euros, but in fact this was automatic for those players. It is the culture they were raised in. The culture we build in British sport needs to do exactly the same. Community must come first.

Thank you to…

The incomparable Charlie Raeburn for facilitating my visit, and everyone at OSS for their contribution to Scottish sport and society. I was very fortunate to be able to interview Troels Rasmussen (CEO of IDAN), Henrik Brandt (a consultant and formerly of IDAN, and supporter of OSS), Mogens Kirkeby (Vice Chair of the DGI and President of ISCA), Simon Roslyng (DGI facilities adviser) and Michael Sørensen (Oure Kostgymnasium). I also met many other sports analysts and academics from Italy and Germany who were a pleasure to speak to as well. Any errors in these posts are entirely mine.