Sport in Schools and Communities

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered sport in schools and communities.

I am really pleased to open this general debate on this important topic. We will all agree that sport has a vital role to play in all of our lives, through its power to be a force for good that brings communities together and as an important tool in improving the health of the nation. The topic of today’s debate brings together multiple areas of work from multiple Departments and arm’s length bodies, which is why I am so pleased to be joined by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools, who will be closing this debate. The work of both of our Departments, as well as many others, contributes to the overall Government mission to support everyone, especially children and young people, to be able to enjoy sport and be more active. As a Government, we are fully committed to supporting sport in schools and communities.

I wish to take a moment briefly to reflect on the power that sport has to bring us together. Last year, we again saw so many unforgettable moments that transcend beyond just the single match or competition, such as the fantastic success of our Lionesses winning at Euro 2022. That inspirational tournament was a truly ground-breaking moment for the sport and has supercharged interest in the women’s game.

We also hosted the Commonwealth games in Birmingham that saw more women’s medals awarded for the first time and truly showcased the fantastic region of Birmingham and the west midlands. We saw success at the men’s T20 world cup and at the rugby world cup. We also hosted a fantastic rugby league world cup tournament here in the UK, with victory for our fantastic wheelchair team. I was very lucky and fortunate enough to be there and see that fantastic victory in person.

The benefits of participating in sports and doing regular exercise are well known. Undertaking regular exercise helps mitigate a wide range of health conditions, both physical and mental, vitally easing the pressure on our NHS. For example, sport and physical activity directly prevents 150,000 cases of heart disease and stroke and 900,000 cases of diabetes per year.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I am delighted to see both my right hon. Friend and the Minister for Schools on the Front Bench. My only regret is that a relevant Minister from the Department of Health and Social Care is not here, as they also put money into the PE and sport premium. Can the Minister reassure us that the Department of Health and Social Care are as engaged in this agenda as are the Departments for Education and for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport?

[Stuart Andrew]

Absolutely. I am happy to confirm that. One thing on which I am focused, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools agrees with me, is that we do work across Government, as there are benefits for all Departments in getting this area of work right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeff Smith]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend anticipates my remarks. We need to support those grassroots sports clubs through the cost of living crisis and get on with ensuring that the bigger professional football clubs have a framework that protects them and the communities that they support and thrive in.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Carol Shanahan, the co-owner of Port Vale football club, regularly raises with me how the funding model in a football pyramid works. If we moved to a model where 70% of the combined Premier League and English Football League TV rights went to the Premier League and 30% went to the rest, that would have a massively positive impact and enable grassroots clubs to see longer term investment. Does the shadow Minister agree that the Government should urge the EFL and the Premier League to do that?

[Jeff Smith]

I certainly agree that we need a better way of distributing finance down the pyramid. In her report, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) left it for the FA and the EFL to come up with a formula. That is the right thing to do at the moment, but they are taking their time. They need to come up with a formula that does what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) says and get money down the pyramid.

We are told that the sport strategy is delayed because of ministerial changes. I very much like the Minister; I hope he maintains his job despite the current ministerial merry-go-round in the Tory party. But if that is the problem, given the chaos in Government, I wonder if we will see the sport strategy before the next election. Once again, Tory party chaos gets in the way of Government action.

We need action. Currently, over a quarter of adults are classed as inactive, along with almost a third of children and young people. There are stark divides in the level of physical activity between different demographics and communities. The covid pandemic has not helped. There are now 1.3 million more inactive adults than before the pandemic. Worryingly, the people who are less active are those living in deprived areas, women, young people, over-75s, disabled people, those with long-term health conditions, and people from black, Asian, and other minority ethnic backgrounds. In many of those groups, activity levels have fallen more sharply since the pandemic. Those disparities start early. Some 35% of children in the least affluent families do fewer than 30 minutes of activity a day, compared with 22% of children from the most affluent families.

How do we tackle this issue? We need schools and community sports clubs to be able to step up and narrow the gaps, but in the last 10 years, state secondary schools in England have lost over 36,000 hours of PE from the curriculum. The national curriculum states that every young person is entitled to experience high-quality PE, but over the last decade school accountability has been increasingly focused on core academic subjects. PE is often neglected in favour of other subjects.

As we have heard, funding for PE and school sport is too often made available only on a short-term basis, with decisions coming at the last minute, leaving schools unable to plan for the long term. We are losing PE teachers: there are 2,700 fewer in England now than in 2011. By ending tax breaks for private schools, the next Labour Government will recruit thousands of new teachers, create a new entitlement to ongoing teacher training and reform the narrow progress measures that deprioritise physical education in the curriculum.

Children and young people’s physical activity rates have now recovered to where they were before the pandemic, but that was not a great place. Fewer than half of children meet the chief medical officer’s guidelines to take part in an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity a day. There is a physical activity gender gap: girls start being less active than boys from the age of five.

Labour believes that the Lionesses’ victory last year should represent a turning point for women in sport, inspiring more girls to play football in particular and sport in general. According to Sport England, less than two thirds of all schools currently offer equal access to girls’ football in PE lessons. Labour will introduce an equal access guarantee for school sport, instead of the current situation where girls can be taught “comparable” sporting activities, which reinforces traditional barriers and stereotypes for girls and women. We have to let children and young people explore a range of sports from a young age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is sad that sometimes these types of debates are not the ones that make the news headlines, as they should do; this debate shows great consensus across the House on the importance of this issue. I concur with a large amount of the comments that have been made, but let me add my two pennies’ worth.

In my brief time as the Minister for school standards, I was delighted to have the physical education and sports premium under my brief. One thing I instructed the officials that I worked with about was the importance of getting beyond the one-year funding settlement that always comes late in the academic year, meaning that teachers have already got curriculums planned and people recruited. It is essential that we not only announce such funding well before the Easter break—that is the very least we should do—but start to move towards a three-year to five-year funding agreement.

The Department for Education has done that extremely successfully with the holiday activities and food programme, which has been a real success in local areas such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where we have the Hubb Foundation, led by the co-owner of Port Vale football club, Carol Shanahan, and one of its former professional footballers, Adam Yates. It has been serving more than 500,000 school meals to those on free school meals and providing thousands of opportunities each school holiday break to young people, particularly disadvantaged people. It engages with the schools to make sure that the young people on the pupil premium or on free school meals are the ones going to the clubs. It helps by using registers to find out what the engagement levels are.

I completely agree with my hon. Friends the Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) about school buildings sitting empty and idly by in our communities, despite being the beating heart of many of them. I was a teacher and I always found it shocking that a building that has the required safeguarding, security, kitchens and sporting facilities remains closed for six or seven weeks during the summer holiday—that is simply not right and we must do much more on this. Surely with small amounts of funding going into schools, we could make those facilities available at a cost whereby, working with volunteers, they can deliver or maintain things. There would be a hugely beneficial impact.

Let me give an example. The Government’s town deal funding for Kidsgrove of £17.6 million meant that we invested nearly £250,000 in the King’s Church of England Academy Kidsgrove, a secondary school, to put in FIFA-standard 3G Astro pitches. We had an agreement that the community would have access to those facilities in the evenings and at weekends. Not only is that generating income for the school; it has created a new job in the process, and it has meant that hundreds of people from across the local area are now descending on Kidsgrove, as the sporting facility sits right next door to Kidsgrove sports centre. As part of the town deal funding, it got nearly £4 million to reopen what is a vital community facility. That is creating a sports hub in an area where, sadly, childhood obesity is at about 28%, according to the latest figures I saw.

Those facilities are great for the local community and we are grateful for the Government funding. This is an example of how it can be spread across the local area. I want to thank Councillor Simon Tagg, the leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council; the Kidsgrove sports centre community group, which is ably led by Mark Clews and others, including Dave Rigby, Ray and Councillor Gill Burnett; and Councillor Paul Waring, who is now the leader of Kidsgrove Town Council and has put money from the town council budget into the sports centre to make sure that the facility thrives.

Of course, as the sports Minister has heard already, leisure centres, particularly those with swimming pools, have to be included in any support for energy usage. I do not want this fantastic community facility, which was refurbished and reopened at the end of last summer, to have to temporarily or, God forbid, permanently close because of energy prices that are not its fault. They are not anyone’s fault, other than Vladimir Putin and his vile campaign against the people of Ukraine. We need to make sure that we re-encompass those facilities, so I implore my right hon. Friend to speak with Ministers in the Treasury and in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to include those facilities in the support for energy usage. I will gladly work with any colleague across the House to continue that campaign and have our voices heard.

We are also looking at facilities within our local communities. I have mentioned the Kidsgrove Sports Centre and the 3G astroturf pitch at the King’s School, but the Kidsgrove town deal meant that we installed a pump track such as the one my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) mentioned. The pump track was a new concept to me, but it has been my biggest success to date. Funding of £100,000 has created one of the largest such tracks in the UK. It was built by local contractor Clark & Kent, which has professional BMX bikers and former Team GB Olympians such as Kyle Evans working for it. This facility, which is free for the community to use, is on an old abandoned site at Newchapel Rec, which had some mud tracks built by the local community. People from as far away as Scotland and Cornwall have been emailing me to say what a great facility it is. Again, that is great for our local community.

When the Levelling Up Parks Fund was announced by the Government, I thought that a mistake had been made because Stoke-on-Trent was not included. I have got used to hearing Stoke-on-Trent being announced as somewhere receiving funding from this Government. So I am going to let the sports Minister lobby his colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and tell them that they must have made a mistake, that we are going to have a round 2 and that Stoke-on-Trent is going to get, I hope, around half a million pounds. I want to have a pump track revolution across my local area to make sure that we install more in places such as Middleport Park, building on the work by the Middleport Matters Community Trust, led by Vicki Gwynne and her amazing team, and building a facility not only to get people physically active, but engaged in learning softer skills, which are so important. We need to ensure that the BMX track in Norton and Ball Green is brought back into use, which councillors Dave Evans, Carl Edwards and local community champion Jenny Taylor have been long calling for. These projects are very important.

I cannot end my remarks without mentioning Port Vale football club’s tremendous day out at Wembley, albeit at the expense of my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley): we thrashed them at Wembley to get promoted to League One, thanks to Carol and Kevin Shanahan’s revolution of that football club. There is a massive engagement now in football. Stoke-on-Trent North is home to Stoke-on-Trent Ladies in Smallthorne, Port Vale Women and Milton United football club, which has ladies and girls teams as well. A revolution is taking place in Stoke-on-Trent to get young people, particularly girls, invested in sport.

I agree that PE must become a core compulsory part of the curriculum. Two hours is the bare minimum that should happen. We need to make sure that Ofsted is properly inspecting that and that we have the right people going in to teach it. Teachers in primary schools are overworked already. We need to give them the support that they need to focus on the curriculum and use the expertise of sports stars—retired and perhaps amateur. Perhaps we could get Phil “The Power” Taylor out and about in schools around Stoke-on-Trent, which is his home. Let us make sure that that can thrive. For me, sport was a life saver—quite literally. I have openly talked about my own mental health struggles, having attempted twice to take my own life. Having a sports team and a fantastic sports coach in Mr McCollin at Princethorpe College taught me discipline and structure. He brought me into a community, which was that team. He taught me those soft skills, although I accept that I do not display them very well in this Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker. My mother would like to see them more.

If we are to truly educate not just bright minds, but great people, sport has an important role to play and I hope that we can go further. I welcome the Minister’s announcement of an incoming sports strategy. I hope that the Minister for Schools will be announcing very shortly that PE and sports premium and working towards a multi-year settlement further on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

I thank Members from across the House for their powerful and impassioned contributions to this good-spirited debate. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to conclude the debate as shadow schools Minister knowing that sport has a key role to play in ensuring that every child in our country succeeds and thrives, no matter their background or where they are from.

Those on both Front Benches kicked off the debate by making powerful and insightful comments. The Minister with responsibility for sport, the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), spoke about the many health benefits of sport and rightly praised the success of the Lionesses last year as an inspiration to us all. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), spoke about how sport can save lives, save the NHS and save public money. Yet the Government’s legacy on investing in sport has been limited, and the publication of relevant strategies remains long overdue.

The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) brought her usual expertise and guidance on these issues. I put on the record my thanks to her for her tireless work on the fan-led review. I know that Pompey fans are grateful for her efforts and I very much look forward to working with her as she continues that work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) spoke about how sport brings people together, and about the importance of equal access to sports and local facilities in communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) spoke about how confidence in sport leads to confidence in life.

As a number of Members have said, we do not have to look back any further than the Lionesses’ fantastic victory in the Euros last summer to see the massive impact that sport can have on our nation’s schools and communities. Not only can it boost the morale of the nation, but it can inspire millions to believe that they can achieve whatever they want if they put their minds to it. As we have heard, sport brings people and communities together, boosts mental health and physical wellbeing, provides employment and opportunities to many, and, for Britain, can be the means by which our nation’s traditions, culture and brilliance are broadcast to the world.

We should not forget the many grassroots organisations that do so much to boost sports participation across the country, as a number of Members have said. Last week, I visited Pompey in the Community, which does tremendous work using the power of football to bring people together, working alongside local schools to transform the lives of children in my city.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I suspect that a lot of Labour Front Benchers will be in Stoke-on-Trent ahead of the upcoming local elections and afterwards, so the hon. Gentleman should be aware that there is a great company called Bee Active in Tunstall. If he wishes to visit, I will happily visit alongside him, but if he wishes to avoid the Twitter trials of being caught and photographed with me, I would more than accept that. Bee Active is a fantastic contributor across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. It is a fine company that delivers the quality PE and sports premium that we urgently need.

[Stephen Morgan]

I am actually in Stoke next week, so perhaps we could meet up and visit that project—I would be delighted to do so; perhaps for reasons other than what the hon. Gentleman might expect.

Last season across Portsmouth and the surrounding areas, more than 35,000 directly benefited from Pompey in the Community programmes providing sporting opportunities to many who would otherwise not receive them. Nor should we forget the fantastic efforts of PE teachers and school support staff, who go above and beyond to build up young people’s confidence and encourage them to get active. Unfortunately, as we have heard, many such schools, grassroots organisations and leisure facilities now face major challenges from the cost of living crisis. Energy costs are increasingly eating up budgets, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington said. With more and more people struggling to pay for services, such as gyms and swimming pools, we sadly have already seen some sporting facilities shutting down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) raised during the debate.

As has been pointed out by others in the debate, the 2012 London Olympics were meant to leave a legacy of increased sports involvement in schools and communities across the country, but according to a new report by the Public Accounts Committee, those promised benefits have failed to occur, with adult participation in sports actually falling in the first three years following the games. The report concludes that the Government

“lacks a compelling vision for integrating physical activity into everyday life”,

and the problem is not just with adult participation. According to official Department for Education statistics, the number of PE teachers has fallen by 3,000 in the past decade, while the number of hours taught has fallen by more than 36,000. That equates to an 11% fall in the hours of PE taught. That is why a Labour Government would boost the number of PE hours taught by hiring 6,500 more teachers and reforming the Government’s narrow progress measures, which can lead to physical education being cut out of the curriculum.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Nick Gibb)]

This has been an excellent debate with some excellent speeches by my hon. Friends and by Opposition Members, including the hon. Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). May I start by paying tribute to the sports Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for the important stand that he took in Qatar during the World cup? My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) made that point, too. I have to say that when I saw my right hon. Friend there, I found it extremely moving. I pay tribute, as the whole House does, to his courage in standing tall.

Sport has a vital role to play in all our lives, and there is an important role for schools to imbue a lifelong love of playing sport and taking part in regular physical exercise. It is clear from hearing Members from all parts of the House speak today that we share a commitment to ensuring that more children take part in PE and sport. I have to say to the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) that we are exceeding our target for recruiting PE teachers. Last year, we exceeded that target by 143%. We recruited 1,521 teacher trainees in PE, far exceeding the target of 980 trainees. We have exceeded the target for PE teacher trainees for at least the past 10 years.

School is where many children and young people first have the chance to participate in sport. High-quality PE and sport in all schools is important to ensuring that every child and young person has the opportunity to take part in a range of sports. It can equip them to continue that engagement into their later lives, as a way of staying fit and active and enjoying the wider benefits that sport brings. That is why physical education is a compulsory subject within the national curriculum from key stage 1 to key stage 4. The PE national curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils develop the competence to excel in a broad range of sport and physical activities, exercise for sustained periods of time and engage in competitive sport and activities leading to healthy active lives.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) highlighted the important link between competitive sport and young people’s confidence, resilience and determination. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch)—the former Sports Minister—made an excellent contribution, demonstrating her experience and passion for sport. She also made an important link between sport and wider cognitive benefits. She is right that sport supports other aspects of school life, including improved attainment, mental wellbeing and personal development.

My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) made the important point about the link between schools with high levels of sport and academic attainment. For example, at the Northampton School for Boys, which has high levels of academic achievement, as well as providing an excellent PE curriculum for key stages 3 and 4 that exceeds two hours per week, it has made PE compulsory for all sixth-form students. In its timetable, Northampton School for Boys offers a variety of sport in winter, including rugby, health and fitness, basketball, hockey and swimming. In the summer, students take part in athletics, cricket, tennis and softball.

In addition to the PE curriculum, the school provides impressive extracurricular sport where children can attend sports clubs before and after school, during lunchtime and at weekends. There are 76 clubs meeting every week during the winter and 54 during the summer. The school has inter-house competitions in addition to the PE curriculum and extracurricular sport. There are typically 50 competitions a year at that school, in which every year group and form class is included. The school ensures that 100% of its student body is represented in at least two competitions annually.

A number of Members raised the issue of two hours of sport a week. Schools are free to organise and deliver a PE curriculum that suits the needs of all their pupils. The Department does not set curriculum time requirements for any subject, but we know that many schools already provide a minimum of two hours of PE and sport to pupils each week. I will look at how to support all schools to do so, supplemented by a good range of extracurricular opportunities.

The DFE school workforce census data for the 2021-22 academic year indicates that PE and sport account for around 8% of all teaching hours in secondary state-funded schools. A rather old 2015 Youth Sport Trust survey found that the average number of minutes of PE per week in state secondary schools was just under two hours, at 118 minutes for key stage 3 and 114 minutes for key stage 4.

The Government continue to fund the primary PE and sport premium, referred to on a number of occasions during the debate. With an additional £320 million of funding to primary schools confirmed for the current academic year, that now totals over £2 billion since 2013. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey said, we doubled that figure from £160 million several years ago. The PE and sport premium supports primary schools, special schools and hospital schools to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of PE, school sport and physical activity that they provide. The Government are considering arrangements for the primary PE and sport premium for the 2023-24 academic year and beyond. That funding will be announced as soon as possible.

I note the exaltations from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for early notice to enable better planning. I also note the passionate advocacy for early notice by my predecessor—I should say my other predecessor—my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis).

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield raised the issue of the shortage of community facilities. The Government are seeking to address the lack of quality space for grassroots support through our multi-sport grassroots facilities programme. The Government have committed to delivering the facilities that every community needs. We are investing £205 million between 2022 and 2025 on top of an existing £18 million annual commitment in England as a step towards that ambition. A mixture of projects were selected for their ability to deliver improved facilities. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that £43 million has already been provided in 2021-22 to improve grass and artificial pitches, changing rooms and floodlights, to make a real difference to communities across the country.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I just want to make a brief point on community facilities. My frustration in the experience with Kidsgrove Sports Centre was that because we wanted to refurbish an existing building, Sport England was willing only to put in about £150,000. Had we tried to find a new site, we could have got £12 million for a brand-new facility; but we managed to build one for £7 million. Will the Minister engage with the sports Minister about how Sport England could be smarter in using taxpayers’ money more wisely to invest in community facilities and refurbish where we can, rather than spending more money by building new ones?

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and it has been noted by myself and the sports Minister.

The sports Minister outlined the £230 million to build or improve community sports facilities. Alongside those community facilities, facilities on school sites represent an important resource for pupils and their families. Schools use their playing fields and gyms to introduce pupils to a range of sports and physical activities through their PE lessons and a variety of structured extracurricular activities.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) made an important point about the wider use of school facilities. The Department is building on the new funding for sports facilities by providing additional support to schools to open their sports facilities outside the core school day, at weekends and in holidays. Phase 3 of the opening school facilities programme aims to connect schools to national and local sporting organisations that can offer children and young people more opportunities to access extracurricular activities.