Children: Sport

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank very much my noble friend Lady Massey for introducing what has been an authoritative and very well informed debate. I also pay tribute to the House for establishing the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Select Committee, which has enabled a powerful body of knowledge and analysis to be assembled. I very much look forward to debating its report in due course.

My main advantage among such an august list of contributors is that I cover both education and DCMS from the Front Bench. I therefore know quite a bit about what has been happening in schools since this Government came to power. As I am sure we would all acknowledge, quality schools sport is essential in addressing the participation of inner-city children, so in the short time that I have I would like to make a few points about this.

Let us face it: it has not been a very happy story. It seems that the Secretary of State took the view that any initiative introduced by the previous Government must, by its very origins, be flawed and should therefore be scrapped. This was not the only initiative to have suffered that fate but, as a number of noble Lords have said, one of the starkest examples of this approach was what happened to school sport. Funding for the well established and well respected school sports partnerships was withdrawn, only to be partially reinstated following massive protests but with nothing like the original coverage and co-ordination, while the target of every child doing at least two hours of PE a week was withdrawn. The latest research now shows that half of children failed to do at least two hours of PE a week and that one in seven teenagers did no sport at all in their last year of school. Meanwhile, as we have heard, Michael Gove is continuing to allow the sell-off of school sports fields, with 50 sold so far, despite pledging to protect them in the coalition agreement.

A recent report by the Commons Education Select Committee—chaired, incidentally, by a Conservative MP—reported that PE lessons are still not good enough in almost one-third of primary schools. It also identified that the Government’s new obsession with children taking part in competitive team sports, such as football, rugby or netball, was deterring many young people, particularly girls, taking part in sport at all. That committee concluded that the Government should reintroduce the target, scrapped by Michael Gove, requiring all pupils to complete two hours of PE a week. It also called for targeted measures for girls. As I say, it has not been a happy story in schools and it feels very much as if there have been three wasted years of dithering in school sport policy over the crucial Olympic period. Obviously, in this respect I welcome the announcement made earlier this year of new primary sport funding for coaches, but that is short-term money and is in place for only two years, and therefore risks failing to embed the training culture in the school.

It feels as if we have had a realistic but rather depressing debate this afternoon. I think we are all united in wanting sport to be a more central part of young people’s lives so I hope that the Minister is able to convince us that, belatedly, if nothing else, a credible school sports strategy is being developed that will encourage all young people to enjoy and maintain an active sporting life while going into adulthood.