School Sport

Debate between Clive Efford and Justin Tomlinson

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.