Readers will have taken note that the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ & Girls’ Championships, which climaxes today, is being beamed live regionally and internationally through the cable network SportsMax and via the Internet.

President and CEO of SportsMax, Mr Oliver McIntosh, makes the point that “No other (Jamaican) sporting event pulls as big an audience across both hardcore and habitual sports viewers as Champs does”.

The strong interest in Champs among the fast-growing and increasingly powerful Jamaican Diaspora will no doubt have influenced title sponsors GraceKennedy to underwrite the broadcast initiative through its foods and money transfer brands.

At bottom line though, what it all means is that Champs, which started just over 100 years ago, with just a few schools in robust track and field competition has taken on significance on an international scale.

No praise can be too high for the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) comprised of school principals supported by a small secretariat for their work over many decades in making a success of Champs and other sporting competitions among Jamaican schools.

However, a major challenge for ISSA going forward will be to adapt and remain relevant, even while holding fast to core values in a rapidly changing environment.

How to ensure, for example, that notwithstanding the magnetic pull of the profit motive Champs remains essentially a school activity dedicated to the development of the well-rounded student.

And how to deal with rules and regulations affecting children which, while they may be of long standing and practice, are viewed by many as draconian in an age of growing sensitivity to the rights of the child.

We are led to this contemplation by the furore over the ISSA decision to block seven schools from participation at Champs because the individual school administrations neglected to tender their applications on time.

No less a personality than the public defender, Mr Earl Witter, has intervened in the issue, insisting that the rights of those children denied the opportunity to participate were breached. As we understand it, Mr Witter, a highly respected lawyer, has gone so far as to suggest that by its actions, which effectively punished children for errors made by school administrators, ISSA acted unlawfully and in breach of the Jamaican Constitution.

It seems to this newspaper that these are not charges which should be ignored by ISSA. School administrators need to ask themselves whether current rules — including the one now in the public eye — are in line with accepted conventions on the rights of the child. Further, would it pass the acid test of the amended Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms which is now close to being signed into law.

Of course, these are not considerations that should be confined to sporting activity. It seems to us that at all levels of school activity, administrators guided by the Ministry of Education will need to take note and make changes where necessary.

In a rapidly evolving world we all need to keep abreast.