School Sport

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I am delighted to have the opportunity to discuss an important issue that I feel passionately about.

It has been more than a year since the Government first announced their intention to dismantle the sports infrastructure put in place by the previous Labour Government to deliver our commitment to increase participation in sport and physical activity. It had a clear structure—the Youth Sport Trust was set up to deal with school and youth sport; Sport England was set up to deal with community sport through national governing bodies; and UK Sport was set up to deal with the elite level—and it was renowned around the world. It has also been more than a year since the Government announced that they were ending funding for school sports partnerships and scrapping ring-fenced funding for specialist sports colleges. Next Tuesday will be the first anniversary of the partial U-turn on school sport, when the Government were forced to introduce a hastily cobbled together package of funding.

Why did I call this debate? Twelve months on, the threat to the future of school sport has not dissipated. In fact, the cuts announced last year will devastate the national sport structure that was the envy of the world, and new threats have emerged within the past 12 months that have the potential to create a perfect storm for school sports.

The army of volunteers within our schools and sports clubs are getting on with making the best of a bad deal. We take that army for granted, but on their shoulders rests much of our country’s sporting life. Those volunteers might not be the type to march on Whitehall, but they are still angry, confused and frustrated by the Government’s seeming indifference to their work. Their voice deserves to be heard.

If we do not hold the Government to account at every step, we risk losing the massive strides forward that we have made over the past decade. There has been a fog of misleading statistics, reviews and cross-departmental hand-wringing. If we do not question and challenge the Government every step of the way, we will wake up one day to find that we have abandoned a generation of young people to substandard sport and physical education.

Why does it matter if our kids do not play sport or do PE at school? Children who play sports do not only benefit physically, because research shows that involvement in sport helps general educational attainment. Sport helps young people to develop self-discipline and to learn how to get along with others. Involvement in sport can help tackle antisocial behaviour and youth crime and overcome psychological problems and loneliness. It can also help to tackle problems of bullying in school and help youngsters with disabilities enjoy sport with other children. Furthermore, children get those benefits whether or not they excel at sport. They do not need to be part of the sporting elite, because merely participating makes children healthier, happier and better pupils. The present Government’s policies threaten young people’s chances to take advantage in school of the enormous benefits offered by participation in sport and PE.

We cannot have a debate about any aspect of sport, particularly sport and young people, without mentioning the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. In Singapore six years ago, when London was awarded the games, we made a solemn commitment to the international community and to the people of this country that we would use the games to inspire a generation of young people through sport. It was a crucial element of London’s bid and set us apart from our main rivals, Paris and Madrid. How can we be serious about that commitment if we dismantle the structures that will help us deliver it and send a message to our young people and our army of sporting volunteers that we do not value sport and are downgrading our commitment to sport in schools?

London 2012 has given us an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leave a lasting sporting legacy, not of stadiums and facilities, important though they are, but of a new generation of young people for whom sport and physical activity are an integral part of their lives. The Government should not have decided to drop the commitment to involving 2 million more people in sport and physical activity. However, it is not too late. The situation is not irretrievable, but the threats to school sport are so great and serious that Ministers must ask themselves how they intend to meet the commitments to ensure an Olympic legacy if they maintain their current course.

I was proud to serve as Sports Minister from 2007 to 2010. It was one of those jobs in government to covet. I was proud of what we achieved in those three years, but I was even prouder that we made sport a cross-departmental policy priority during our 13 years in government, and made massive progress in putting sport at the heart of Government thinking, especially through our investment in school sport and PE.

Let me remind Members of what we inherited when we were first elected in 1997. It is no exaggeration to say that school sport was in a dire situation. PE and competitive sport were often seen as optional extras, and many schools had substandard sports facilities, if any. What sport took place in schools relied almost exclusively on the good will of dedicated teachers, parents and volunteers. Only one in four schoolchildren took part in two hours of quality PE per week. Playing fields were too often seen by local authorities as development opportunities. An astonishing statistic and a damning indictment of the previous Tory Government’s policy on education and sport is that between 1979 and 1997, 10,000 playing fields were sold for development. That is more than 10 every week for 18 years, which is shocking.

The new Labour Government acted quickly to rectify the situation. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 introduced the toughest ever protection for school playing fields. Further legislation in 2004 made the sale of playing fields an option of last resort, and local authorities were compelled to use the receipts from any sales to improve existing sports facilities. In contrast to the 10,000 playing fields lost between 1979 and 1997, just 192 were lost between 1997 and 2008, and in the majority of those cases, although the playing field was sold, the site benefited from increased sports provision.

Our physical education and sports strategy, which was supported by £1.5 billion in funding between 2003 and 2008 and by a further £755 million from 2008, enabled us to put in place a network of 450 school sport partnerships. Partnerships were centred on specialist sports colleges, which were linked to local secondary and primary schools and sports clubs. By 2010, thanks to the work of the SSPs, 90% of pupils in partnership schools were receiving two or more hours of high quality school sport.

We hear much from coalition Ministers about competitive sport and how Labour supposedly did not prioritise it. I am sure that we will hear the Minister repeat misleading statistics on competitive sport and participation—I hope we do not, but I think that we might. The lead academic evaluator on SSPs criticised the Prime Minister for a

“selective use of statistics that ignore the tremendous improvement over the past decade”.

Competitive sport was increasing under Labour. The number of children taking part in competitive sport, not just between schools but in schools, increased from 58% in 2006-07 to 78% in 2009-10.

Labour did not emphasise sports participation and physical activity because we were a Government of sports fanatics, although there are a few of us about. Sport was a cornerstone in tackling numerous key policy issues, such as obesity and related health issues, antisocial behaviour, educational attainment and citizenship. It was a genuinely cross-departmental priority. Interestingly, there was general cross-party consensus that Labour got it broadly right on school sport, and certainly cross-party support for school sport partnerships. There was no indication that Opposition parties had an alternative agenda.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for focusing on a very important issue for local schools. Although sport and education are a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, the same principles apply. Does he feel that school sports should be twinned with the issue of diet control, obesity and eating habits? Does he feel that the issue is not just about getting fit, but about weight control, too?

[Mr Sutcliffe]

Very much so. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He will know about the statistics on obesity in young people and about the health risks. He is right that sport is an integral part of life skills. Not everybody can be a champion, and not everybody can be elite, but we can be the best that we can be. I do not look like a healthy specimen, but my own involvement in sport through the parliamentary football team, school sport, the friends that we make through sport and the life skills that it gives us, all show that sport is an integral part of what we should be trying to achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Gentleman consider that there is a role for private investment and partnership with schools as a way of getting more money for the programme? Is that something he has considered and, if so, how does he think it will work?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely do, and I will come to that point shortly.

There are some advantages to the changes that have been introduced, but we need to work out a way to ensure that schools continue to see sport as a priority. There was another reason why we had to look again at how the school sports partnerships worked. In my constituency, it was a very good partnership, but we heard in the debates on the subject that in other constituencies people who work in schools were saying, “They aren’t delivering very much. I am very passionate about sport as a head teacher. I would like to employ my own choice of sports coach directly.” To a certain extent, therefore, some schools now have better provision, because they have gone directly to the person they think can provide sporting provision in the areas where they had gaps.

It is also fair to say that the school sports partnerships that are still in existence, including my own in Swindon, have had to step up their performance, because that cheque is no longer guaranteed. They have to go to schools and make a pitch about how they will deliver additional benefits to them. There is still a role to play, however, in helping those SSPs to be in a position to deliver improvements, because, by and large, they are sports enthusiasts and are particularly good at organising sports events. They are not necessarily geared up to be a semi-business—a not-for-profit business—so there should be a role to provide additional help in that way.

In response to the intervention, I would like to see SSPs identify additional partnership opportunities, not just through the private sector, but through working with local authorities, the local NHS and sports forums and local sports clubs. To give a good example, if a school offered only football every week and wanted the SSP to bring in street dance, it should bring in not a one-off coach, but representations from street dance clubs, so that children who enjoy a taster session in school then have the opportunity to join a club and take up the activity on a regular basis. Local authorities can play an important role in that regard. The equivalents of the lead members for leisure and the key officers should sit down with the SSP organisations and say, “You can bring the following people to the table and we’ll help co-ordinate that,” so when the SSP then pitches to individual schools, it will be able say that it will not only provide two hours of street dance, but will bring in supporting clubs and give advice on nutrition and on how to do a variety of other beneficial tasks above and beyond the obvious reasons for it to go into the school. That is about asking what more we can do to make SSPs seem much more attractive to schools and to keep sport as a priority.

On what is happening in schools at the moment, I would like to see changes in relation to two particular challenges. The first is the cost of insurance, which is an issue that I have raised in a number of debates. The majority of teachers are relatively young, and young people are very expensive to insure. We need to be able to bus pupils around in order to promote school games and take them to learn outside the traditional school environment. Many teachers are young and new recruits are getting younger, so the cost for schools—it is a burden—is incredibly expensive. I keep urging the Government to consider a national deal; schools throughout the country purchase things, so surely, as a collective with huge economies of scale, we should be able to get a better deal from the insurance industry. I encourage that.

I have been told by an inspirational local physical education teacher, Julie Lewis, about a second element in relation to insurance. In order to drive a minibus, the driver needs a certain D-class element on their licence. Julie already had that—she is of a similar age to me—so it was a relatively simple process. She just had to go to the local authority and carry out a simple test. She passed and was then able to drive the minibus. The younger teachers now have to do three days of training, which costs about £2,000, so that is another burden that the school has to weigh up: when budgets are tight, is it worth releasing teachers for three days? All too many schools like the idea of doing it, but they cannot afford it, either because of the cash or because they do not have the time to release teachers. We need to look at that.

PE teachers also face a dichotomy in relation to their priorities. Julie told me that she is extremely keen to provide after-school clubs. The children love them and embrace them, and really want to take them up. If she could offer as many sessions as she would like, they would all be full. However, she has to plan them at the same time as she should be planning her lessons, and planning her lessons to make sure that they are delivered in the correct manner is what is judged by Ofsted to determine whether she is a good PE teacher and whether the school is a good school. There is a clash; one area is being judged and rewarded, but it is as if she has to magic up a way of providing the after-school classes that might be of most benefit to the children.

I have talked to other teachers. A friend of mine worked in a challenging school in Oxford. During his first year as a qualified teacher, he was full of enthusiasm and provided a huge range of after-school sports clubs. They helped with behaviour and with tackling crime in the local area, because the children were not hanging around street corners straight after school. They were doing something constructive and positive. My friend then had the opportunity to do one-on-one tuition, for which he was paid. He could not be in two places at once. His heart said that he wanted to do his bit for the children he was there to inspire and for whom he played a positive role, but his brain said that he wanted to go on holiday and that he needed to buy a new laptop. In the end, the financial reward prevailed.