Teaching School-Age Sport

Baroness Billingham Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Billingham]

My Lords, we do indeed thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for this interesting Question. I shall just repeat it to remind the House what it says:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have to ensure that the quality of teaching of school-age sport increases the levels of participation in sport in later life”.

Well, my straightforward and brief answer to that is, “None whatever”. I have to say that I am outraged, as are thousands of others, that the actions taken by the coalition so far have destroyed the hard-won foundation for sport laid by the previous Government. I can tell noble Lords that it was not easy. Successive Labour Sports Ministers, supported by the health and educational lobbies, battled to increase the reality of PE in schools and to open up the reality of sporting extracurricular activities, which other noble Lords have mentioned. They succeeded, and when the coalition took over, it had the potential to improve not only the health of the nation but to bring about a fair and broad introduction to sport at grass-roots level. Within that framework, school partnerships had offered expert, well trained staff and the network of school sport partnerships that held the prospect of high-level professional input into schools, which had been lacking in the past and which we had all bemoaned.

So let us fast-forward to the arrival of Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education for the coalition Government. He promptly announced a cut of more than £160 million of funding for sport in schools. He did this by removing the ring-fencing of that money, allowing heads to decide where the extra money should be spent. When league tables of academic achievement dominate the priorities of heads, the likelihood of that money being spent on academic subjects becomes, for them, irresistible. That decision, taken by the Secretary of State without any public consultation or discussion within the schools themselves and, I understand, without even any discussion in Cabinet, will have the most profound and devastating effect on the sporting lives of future generations.

To take away basic school sport is to wreck grass-roots sport—the vehicle by which individuals may later choose a specialist sport to provide a lifelong interest and involvement in that sport. The Secretary of State ignored at a stroke all arguments about the benefits of sport across the nation, as others have mentioned—health, well-being and educational advantage. It is clear that Michael Gove is sport-phobic, even philistine, and it is even more astounding when viewed against the promises of sporting legacy to be achieved against the background of the 2012 Olympics.

All promises are broken. As the Times wrote just last week:

“2012 legacy plan for a fitter Britain is quietly scrapped”.

So much for the promises which helped London to win the Games, and so much for the vision of the noble Lord, Lord Coe, of a healthier sporting nation. Even the Prime Minister is a very keen sportsman. However, they all find themselves well and truly rumbled. The coalition fails to understand the crucial role of schools, both secondary and primary, where well taught sport can be embedded as the foundation for children’s future sporting lives. Instead, the DCMS, the Secretary of State and the Sports Minister show their total lack of understanding of the nature of a sporting heritage. Grass-roots sport is the key to success. Their belief that competitive sport is the answer—that Olympic-style competition might be the spur—completely misses the point. As has been said, for a small minority of very talented individuals that may be the case. For the vast majority, however, it will prove disastrous.

All the evidence shows that Labour’s investment in sport was having a rich return. Our ambition of 2 million more people becoming physically active by 2012 and for 60 per cent of young people to be doing at least five hours of sport per week became a reality. This is now on the scrapheap of coalition dogma. That is why I am so angry. For the first time, students in state schools—93 per cent of the school population—were provided with a well funded framework for a sporting legacy. The statistics of the outcome of the Labour investment of £1.5 billion from 2003-08—specialist school colleges, as have been mentioned, school sport co-ordinators, school and club links, and a host of other initiatives—showed a 10 per cent increase in active participation across the community. By his draconian action, Michael Gove has put paid to this, with only government support for competitive sport to hide his nakedness.

But noble Lords can relax. Public schools, which educate just 7 per cent of our children, know better. Their comprehensive programme of expensively funded school sports continues unabated. They provide a full range of sport, competitive and non-competitive, and they will be richly rewarded. In future, even more privately educated athletes will hold aloft the winning trophies and wear the gold medals around their necks. The rest—the 93 per cent—will look on to a world that has been ruthlessly denied them.

Finally, to put the tin lid on it, the Government have announced an additional £41 million for the Olympic opening ceremony, presumably for hundreds of synchronised maypole dancers. What a total lack of judgment. That money should have gone back into schools and grass-roots sport. It is most dispiriting. The coalition has lost its way.