School Sport

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely agree, and I will come to that point in a bit more detail later.

I will touch on three points: first, the school sports partnerships; secondly, what is physically going on in schools as we speak; and, thirdly, wider community access to schools. I shall then put my personal requests to the Minister.

On school sports partnerships, I raised a number of concerns in debate that led to the Government changing their position. I support the principle of the school sports partnership, but a premise that attracted a lot of criticism of the scheme is that it did not necessarily drive up levels of competitive sport. That was a flawed assessment because, generally, if someone is very good at sport, it is probably because their parents are that way inclined and encouraged sport from an early age by providing access to sports clubs.

School sports partnerships were good for people who were not naturally inclined to sport or gifted at it, because they offered a wider breadth of sporting opportunities. For example, I remember that we played football pretty much every week at my school, which suited me because I liked football. However, some people were not necessarily enthused by the opportunities that football presented. The main driver behind the school sports partnership was that it brought in other sporting opportunities and showed people that there was something out there for everyone. There were encouraging signs that it was making a difference to the majority of children who are not necessarily naturally gifted at sport.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, but I think I just heard him say that school sports partnerships did not drive up participation in competitive sport. Can he tell me the figures he bases that statement on?

[Justin Tomlinson]

The point behind my remark was that when the Government were making their judgment about whether the school sports partnerships were delivering value for money, they looked only crudely at the number of children taking part in competitive sport, which was two in five children. That figure did not change. However, what did change significantly was the number of children who were not doing any sport at all who then took up sport. They might not have been playing in regular leagues outside school, but they were at least being active—whether that was just for the two hours a week or whether it led to other opportunities.

For example, when I was touring my constituency, we saw encouraging signs; people were doing things such as cheerleading and street dancing, which were incredibly popular but because they were not strictly sports in the traditional competitive sense, they were not included in those crude statistics on competitive sport. However, those people were being active. When I was the lead member for leisure, I did not care what people were doing, as long as they were doing something that increased their heart rate. I also say that with my hat on as vice-chair of the all-party group on heart disease. We are keen to encourage such activities.

The change in position allowed nine months for the school sports partnerships to, in effect, go to schools and secure funding. I do not recognise the point about cuts to the funding; it is just that the funding is no longer ring-fenced. The challenge that remains for school sports partnerships is that not every school necessarily identifies sport as a priority. The Swindon school sports partnership has managed to ensure that around 20 schools have signed up to carry on in pretty much the same format as before. However, a number of schools have decided that there are other priorities for that money and, by removing ring-fencing from the funding, they are free to make that choice. I think that such a choice is wrong for those schools and when I meet those who work in them, I regularly push the benefits of providing sport. We must deal with that challenge. It comes down to individual heads; it is fair to say that if a head has a personal interest in sport, it is certainly pushed to the forefront.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) on securing the debate and on his contribution to sport in this country as a former Minister. He is still highly regarded in the sporting industry and fraternity. As he has demonstrated, he has a real depth of knowledge, and we are grateful to him for the opportunity of a debate. It is a pleasure also to follow the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), who clearly has a depth of knowledge. I agree with many things that he said, particularly about maximising participation.

What is school sport about? Why sport? Why do we want to encourage participation? What is the role of schools in sport? If we do not understand what we are trying to achieve, we will get things horribly wrong. As the previous speakers have said, school sport must be about providing a broad experience not only of sports themselves but of things associated with sport. One intervention mentioned experience of outdoors and various other forms of recreation. Dance has been mentioned, which can be associated with sport through the sporting activities that engage young women in particular, but not only young women; I have seen community sports activities involving dance that include young boys, so it is not only about young women, but about that broad experience of sport.

By providing that broad experience, we hope that the understanding of what sport can deliver and the experience of what it can achieve throughout someone’s life will lead to people having a lifetime’s engagement. Whether it is the joy of participating in a team sport or individual competitive sport, or simply physical recreation, such as going to a gymnasium or jogging, such activity improves a person’s health and well-being.

By providing regularly in schools, from an early age, the opportunity for young people to participate in sport of all kinds, to experiment with sport and to understand sport, we may encourage them to participate in those physical activities throughout their lives, with all the benefits for people’s improved health, and perhaps engage them in community sports, so that they do not become involved in antisocial behaviour and things like that. All that flows from what we achieve in broadening experience in school. I have to say that the Government do not get that, which is a real problem.

One of the starkest examples is the slashing, without any consultation, of the money for school sports; £162 million was cut without any discussion beforehand with the school sport partnerships. No one asked what infrastructure we could retain to keep school sport partnerships going and to build on their success, and the Government believed that they were successful, because in March 2010, before the general election, the then shadow Sports Minister, now the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, said in a Five Live debate that it would be wrong to dismantle “13 years of work” and that his party “would build on them”. In April 2010, during the general election campaign, he said:

“There has never been a more important time for school sport, and the Olympic legacy must have school sport at its heart”.

Only a few months later, we had an announcement from the Secretary of State for Education that school sport partnerships were of no value whatever and were to be cut. It was not until the hue and cry that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South described that the Secretary of State was forced into an embarrassing U-turn and announced that money would be made available over the following two years to cobble together something to replace the funding that was previously available for school sport. We ended up with £32.5 million for this financial year and the following one for PE teacher release, £11 million for the next five years from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, £11 million for the next two years from the Department for Education, and £4 million over the next five years from the national lottery.

We have seen a 64% cut in investment in sport in schools. Not a single Department has had to suffer such a cut. The Minister will probably say that the Government have removed the ring fence, are not acting in a top-down way and will allow schools the freedom to invest where they choose, but what message is that sending about the Government’s priority for sport in schools when direct funding is cut in that way? A 64% cut is not acceptable. So what do we get then? We get an announcement that we will have school games and an amazing statement from the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, who said:

“I can sum up our sports policy in three words: more competitive sport.

By banishing once and for all the left-wing orthodoxy that promotes ‘prizes for all’ and derides competition we allow sport to do what it does best of all: teach children to learn about how to cope with both success and failure—and most importantly learn to pick yourself up when things don’t go according to plan.”

What a home-spun homily that is. My God, in this modern day and age, what a load of nonsense.

Let us return to where we started. In 1997, participation in sport in schools was one in four in years 1 to 11. After investing in school sport partnerships and so on, that rose in 2003-04 to 62%, and in 2009-10, it was more than 90%. In fact, we had virtually stopped measuring it because we had started to measure participation rates in three hours a week. Our target for the Olympic legacy was to achieve 60% of children in schools doing five hours a week during the curriculum period and after school, and to make sport available at that level. We did that through work with the Youth Sport Trust, and I pay tribute to the trust’s work and what it achieved for participation in our schools, and particularly to the leadership of Baroness Campbell. The Youth Sport Trust has come under attack from a number of people, and there was a ridiculous outburst from Lord Moynihan, chair of the British Olympic Association, who claimed that participation in school sport had not risen significantly.

Let us look at the statistics, the focus on competitive sport and the suggestion that something acts against participation in competitive sport if sport for everyone is encouraged, which is what the hon. Member for North Swindon eloquently suggested is the right thing to do. We did not start to measure the figures for who took part in intra-school competitive activities—competitive sport within a school—until quite late in the process, because obviously we inherited very low participation in 1997. In 2006-07, 58% of those in years 1 to 11 took part in intra-school competitive sport, and by 2010 that had risen to 78%—that was 79% for boys and 77% for girls. That was a very high figure indeed. Regular participation in intra-school sport then fell to 39% for years 3 to 11 in 2010. But let us look at the figures for interschool sport—sport between schools in a local area. In 2004, that was 33%, and by 2010 it had risen to 48%.

The issue is regular sport. The Government have said that only one in five children participate in competitive sport. That is correct; it was about 21% in 2010. But that is based on key stage 2 young people participating in interschool competitive sport three times in a year. At key stages 3 and 4, in secondary school when children have gone to another school, the requirement to be recorded is the number taking part in regular school sport nine times a year. If we are to see a significant increase in teachers regularly taking pupils out of school to qualify under those statistics, which the Government used to justify their determination to increase competitive sport, we must see an increase in the number of pupils who are taken out of school nine times every year to compete in competitive sport. That is a significant demand on resources.

I would be interested to hear what research the Department has done and what consideration it has given to that. It is okay to provide money for PE teacher release, but that is targeted mainly at organising school games and co-ordinating local primary schools in competitive sport; it is not intended to free up PE teachers to ferry about the competitive teams and sports people who will be involved. The Government’s policy is confusing. If secondary pupils are to play sport nine times every year to increase the figure from one in five, I would like to know where the resources will come from, where the planning is and what discussions the Government have had.

We have been told that competitive sport will lead to the national games as though that is something new. The national games have taken place for a number of years, and are extremely successful. Some 1,600 pupils took part in the national school games this year. In fact, records were broken when Jessica Applegate broke the 50 metres freestyle swimming world record for her age group. There was also a 100 metres running championship best and a 1,500 metres running championship best. Competitive sport has not suffered as a consequence of the previous Government’s work with the Youth Sport Trust and in our schools. The suggestion that the Government invented the national games network and that that is a triumph is frankly ridiculous.

The Government have now stopped collecting statistics. The Minister answered a couple of my questions on that very subject. He said:

“The annual PE and Sport Survey collected data on pupils’ participation in PE and sport. While participation rates increased in areas targeted by the previous Government”—

that was virtually everywhere—

“the proportion of pupils playing competitive sport regularly remained disappointingly low... We have removed from schools the burden of having to fill in long, time-consuming and cumbersome sport survey returns, which was a requirement under the previous Government.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2011; Vol. 732, c. 86W.]

So there we have it. The 21% figure for the one in five pupils who are playing regular competitive sport is worthy of using to take money away from the school sport partnerships and focus on competitive sport, but it is not a figure that is worth continuing to collect. If the baseline is 21% participation in competitive sport, how will we ever know whether the Government have improved their performance? They are doing away with that measure, although it is used to justify their case and to do away with the data in the first place. The Government’s policy is very confused indeed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South mentioned the sale of playing fields. Fields in Trust, the Football Association and many others have expressed concerns about the relaxing of restrictions and the requirement to consult before school playing fields are decommissioned and sold off. The Government are like a burglar released from prison after 13 years who immediately goes back to their old ways. Between 1979 and 1997, the Government sold 10,000 school playing fields. We introduced the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and between 1998 and 2010, we sold 230. Almost half were in schools that were closed. Many were in schools that used the sale to improve their sports facilities in the remaining parts of the grounds. A very small number of the others were sold for development outside education. There is a great deal of concern about the Government’s approach to sport in general and how they are straight away starting to relax restrictions on the sale of school playing fields.

From day one, the message sent loud and clear from the Government is that they do not value sport. The active people survey shows that active participation has gone down for the first year since the bid for the 2012 Olympics was won—small wonder with the messages going out from the Government.

Consider the elite end of sport, from the merger of UK Sport and Sport England to distinctive bodies that perform very different roles. One brings our athletes at the top of their game to the podium, so that we perform well at events such as the Olympics. Sport England improves facilities and works within our communities. Consider school sport partnerships, where we saw all the money taken away at a stroke with no consultation whatever, with something having to be cobbled together, including £11 million for two years from the Department of Health. The Department is investing in competitive sport specifically, and I have asked what it is about competitive sport that improves people’s health that general participation in sport does not. I have not yet had an answer, but I am interested in the research that shows competitive sport improves health the most.

Abolishing the collection of statistics is evidence that the Government do not want us to find out what they are doing. Whether it is participation in general sporting activity or in competitive sport, we need to know what is going on in our schools. All those things show that the Government lack any serious commitment to long-term investment in schools. If we look ahead, we know that the Department for Education has told school sports organisers to expect no funding beyond August 2013. The whole thing falls off a precipice in the next 18 months. We are concerned that the people involved in those organisations will already be starting to look elsewhere. Just when we should be increasing participation on the back of the Olympic games, the whole thing falls apart.

We are concerned about the implications of making it clear that funding will end. There is a lack of planning for sport as we go towards Rio, even though there is the Olympic legacy to consider and the interest that will be generated around the Olympic games. There appears to be no concept coming from the Department for Education or from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about how they will harness that interest and take it forward. It is all dumped on the sports governing bodies as though the Government have no role to play whatever.

Can the Minister tell us how participation will be measured in future? He has told us that he is doing away with the annual PE and sport survey, so how will he measure participation so that we know what is going on? It would be helpful if we knew that the Government had a plan. Will sport be protected within the national curriculum and given the status that it deserves? How will we measure participation in competitive sports? We have a measure that has been used as a baseline, which is one in five. I have set out how that is measured, but how will it be measured in future? What is the Minister doing to protect our playing fields? What is he doing about the national policy planning framework? Will he ensure that sports bodies are consulted as part of the decommissioning of education’s playing fields? Will he ensure that the safeguards put in place by the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 will still stand and protect places? If we do not protect them, young people will not be able to play sport in future. If we are to have sport in our schools, it is essential to have quality playing fields in which to participate in sport.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe), a distinguished former Sports Minister, on raising this subject. It is an issue to which he is dedicated, and we all appreciate that. I also thank other hon. Members for their well informed contributions. A lot of questions have been raised, and hon. Members seem to have anticipated what I am about to say. Therefore, in order to confuse those pundits, I will not give the speech that I had planned, even though it does not say a lot of the things that people anticipated that I would say.

Several statistics have been used, in particular by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who cited a recent survey that shows a downturn in sports participation by over-16s and adults. That, however, is the problem, because after the £2.4 billion spent on the previous Government’s programme since 2003, the idea that sport is a good thing has clearly not embedded itself in the ideas of people moving through school and college and into adulthood. It is not just something that young people do because they have to turn out for an hour or two hours a week on a school games pitch. It is something that they have to do because it is good for them and fun; it is a socialising activity; and it is about teamwork and team building. Young people would want to carry that on into adulthood, so why do the statistics clearly show that it has not been embedded? Despite the best of intentions, spending an awful lot of money has not had the desired effect of ensuring that young people in school want to do sport and carry on doing it into adulthood as something that one naturally does.

While I am talking about the use of statistics, I have to say that all the statistics that are used by the Department and by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—despite an awful lot of accusations, he is in no way opposed to organised sport; he is a big fan of it—are from the previous Government and have been endorsed by the chief statistician as well.

Perhaps I can take up a few of the points in between the hyperbole used by the hon. Member for Bradford South. I absolutely endorse his comments about the army of volunteers, who are the backbone of sport in the community and sports clubs in our towns and constituencies. We want them to work more with schools, so it is not just a case of sport that people do in school and sport that people do over the weekend at the local football club. We need much more interaction between the two. I am the president of a very successful local football club that typically on a Saturday sees 300 or 400 kids out on the local sports pitches. That is achieved largely through volunteers. The children range in age from five upwards, and both girls and boys are involved. We want to see more of that type of activity. That is one reason why we have given additional funding, through the school games additional funding network to fund further volunteering. I am talking about county sports partnerships recruiting more volunteers to help with the school games and beyond both at level 2, between schools, and at level 1, within schools.

I absolutely endorse the comments from the hon. Gentleman to which I have referred, but he did also make a comment about the school games, which seemed to come under quite a lot of attack. I think that most people agree that the school games will be a good thing as an extra tool to encourage more schools and more schoolchildren to become involved in competitive sport as a matter of routine. More than 11,000 schools have already signed up in the past few months, which is remarkable. We encourage all schools to do that.

[Clive Efford]

I point out to the Minister that the school games did not come under attack. We were merely pointing out that they already exist. To present the school games as some new creation on the back of the emphasis on competitive sport is just misleading people.

[Tim Loughton]

The school games, which were launched last summer, involved more than 10,000 children in the summer pilots. I launched the version in the north-west. They have a particular focus on disability sports, which is something that has very much been missing. They will have a programme of endorsements and accreditations of the schools taking part. That builds on the success of the games that have gone before—sponsored by Sainsbury’s, I think—but is taking it to a whole new level. Surely that should be welcomed, but there seems to be a mindset against competitive sport. I find that extraordinary.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to a quote about learning to “pick yourself up”. Sport is not just about physical fitness, important though that is. It is about life experiences, socialising, working together as a team, and winning and losing and moving on. That is what competitive sport is designed to achieve. The hon. Gentleman’s contribution seemed rather confused. He used the statistic about only 21% of children doing regular competitive sport and talked about wanting to move towards children participating in such activity at least nine times a year. Is it really ambitious to want our kids to be involved in competitive sport nine times a year, particularly after so much money has been spent on trying to embed a culture of sport as a good thing that everyone wants to do on a regular basis in schools?

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I had better move on or I will not answer any of the hon. Gentleman’s points, but I think that there is a real poverty of ambition.

Let me return to the issue of disabled sport and the charge about the elite nature of the school games. The opportunity to take part in competitive sport is not elite; it is at four levels. It is within schools, where we want every pupil to be able to take part; it is between schools; it is at county level; and it is at national level, with the showcase of the first national championships taking place next May in the Olympic stadium, before it is even used for the Olympics. Within that, I want to see opportunities for disabled pupils. I think that the former Minister for Sport, the hon. Member for Bradford South, would probably admit that we have done very badly on encouraging disability sports in schools. If someone happens to have a disability, PE time is when they go to the library or do something else like that, which is entirely unacceptable. We are far more ambitious than that. Part of the programme for the school games is about encouraging able-bodied pupils to help to set up tournaments and to engage with children who have disabilities, so that they feel every bit as involved at every stage. There needs to be recognition of the various challenges that they will have, but those are surmountable.