School Sport

Debate between Craig Whittaker and Clive Efford

Thursday 5th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford]

The Government have said that the scheme will be externally evaluated, and I would like to hear how that will be done, and what will be looked at.

This point goes back to the intervention from the Chair of the Education Committee. Following the Secretary of State’s announcement, and the decision to take money away from school sport partnerships on a whim, there was a hue and cry from people involved in sport and school sport in particular. If you check Hansard, Sir Alan, you will find that I was one of those angry people. I am sure that a sense of how shocked and angry I was at the sudden announcement just leaps out of the page. The Secretary of State was forced to come back to Parliament to make another announcement, in which he reinstated £65 million—£32.5 million a year for two years—for PE teacher release, whereby teachers would be released for a day a week to co-ordinate sports in their area. Through a series of freedom of information requests, I found out that that funding was resulting in 60% less time being spent organising school sport than was spent by school sport co-ordinators under school sport partnerships. Despite attempts to back-fill the hole, the damage had been done. There was a significant reduction in the amount of time being spent organising sport outside the classroom.

In addition—it really is a sorry pattern—the Government have watered down protections for school playing fields in the national planning framework. Schools are no longer required to provide a specified amount of playing field space; they merely have to provide suitable outdoor space. It also beggars belief that free schools can open up with absolutely no sport provision whatever. That cannot be right and is not consistent with the actions of a Government who value school sport and consider it deserving of higher priority in the curriculum. In August 2012, the Government abolished the two-hour target; without any means of monitoring what is going on, it is difficult to judge what the implications have been.

The announcement of the £150 million scheme was welcome, but as I pointed out to the Chair of the Education Committee, it came after the dismantling of the structures put in place for school sport. The emphasis on primary schools has been welcomed, and I echo that to some degree, and will return to the subject. The funding is ring-fenced, which is another U-turn, because we have been told that ring-fencing was out of favour under this Government, and that schools should use money as they wish. How will the Government monitor the scheme? We welcome the specialist PE training of 120 primary teachers, but it is a drop in the ocean across 17,000 primary schools. There are also questions about Ofsted’s capability. Can we be sure that Ofsted personnel are properly trained and equipped to evaluate what is going on? The issue is not just the two hours, but what happens during those two hours. We want to ensure that school sport is evaluated in the right way.

When the Government announced the school games, which I welcome, it was an excuse to cover up the loss of school sport partnerships. That was an attack on people who value increasing participation. In a blog on the “ConservativeHome” website in 2011, the then Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey, said that the Government were

“banishing once and for all the left-wing orthodoxy that promotes ‘prizes for all’ and derides competition”.

That is a classic example of accusing one’s opponent of being in favour of something and then abolishing it. The previous Government introduced school games and certainly were not at all opposed to competitive sport. In fact, we said that where people were motivated, and wanted to excel and to participate in competitive sport, they should be able to do so. School sport partnerships were successful at increasing participation in competitive sport.

[Craig Whittaker]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but only to a point. It was clear from evidence heard by the Education Committee that where school sport partnerships worked well, they worked very well, but they did not work well in many areas. Another piece of evidence made it clear that, given the £2.5 billion cost, they were perhaps not the most effective way of spending the money.

[Clive Efford]

Rolling up all the money to £2.5 billion makes the programme sound very expensive. It was actually £162 million a year, and this Government have put £150 million into the primary school sports premium. I do accept, however, that school sport partnerships did not work so well in some areas, but that does not justify getting rid of the whole scheme. They were a good foundation on which we should have been building.

I must start to draw my comments to a close. In the Government’s response to the Education Committee’s point about competitive sport, I notice that they mention dance as an activity that they want to be encouraged in schools. I assume that that means that there is a difference of opinion with the Prime Minister, who was being critical when he said that the

“two hours that is laid down is often met through sort of Indian dancing classes.”

I assume that that policy is no longer being followed.

I will conclude, because I want to give the Minister a fair go at coming back at me. I think that I have been going for nearly 20 minutes, Sir Alan—the speech timer seems to have stopped.

What do we want in the future? What are we looking for? I welcome the point about core physical literacy and the investment in primary schools. Investment in specialist teaching in primary schools is not to replace PE, but in addition to it. We must not have teachers feeling that they have somehow abdicated responsibility for teaching PE because that money is going into our primary schools. It is important for PE to be part of the curriculum, and I support the Select Committee recommendation that teacher training be altered to cover that. We also want co-ordinators for PE in every primary school, as we have for maths and literacy, so that it has similar status, and so that someone takes responsibility for ensuring not only that a decent amount of PE is taught—we would restore the two-hour minimum requirement—but that it is taught at a decent standard.

On physical literacy, we need to get it right from day one, which means starting when children are at pre-school. We need to talk to carers, parents and the health service—health visitors and such people—to ensure that everyone understands that developing core physical literacy from day one is important. From an early age, if children feel inadequate, they may start to use avoidance tactics, so that they do not get into a situation in which they feel challenged, and we see that behaviour in relation to physical activity. It is therefore important that we encourage everyone to instil the idea of physical activity in the right way, and that we develop physical literacy and core physical strength in children from the earliest age.

I support the primary premium money, so that children, in particular at key stage 2, get the broadest experience of as vast a range of sports as we can achieve at that stage of their education. When they go to secondary school, they can then make informed choices about the sports and physical activities that they might want to get involved in. I agree with points made earlier: this is not only about competition. It has to be about getting people active and instilling that habit in them for a lifetime.

We need long-term planning. I have been all over the country, talking to people involved at all levels of sport, including PE teachers and co-ordinators, and they want long-term planning from Government. They also want politicians to co-operate with one another. I would welcome the opportunity to sit down and talk across Government about a long-term plan for sport and recreational activity in our schools and communities, so that we can give people the consistency and therefore the confidence to plan ahead for the sorts of sports that they are delivering in their communities. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.