Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister in her opening sentence stated that there are few subjects which unite people more than the well-being of children. I fully agree, and for that reason I believe there will be a constructive approach across the Committee when it comes to seeking ways to strengthen the Bill and achieve that objective.

The Roman poet Juvenal coined the famous phrase:

“Mens sana in corpore sano”—


a healthy mind in a healthy body. That emphasises the eternal interconnectedness of physical and mental well-being. It suggests that prioritising both is crucial for overall health, happiness and well-being. A healthy body can support a healthy mind by providing the physical energy and resilience needed for children to navigate life’s challenges. Conversely, a healthy mind can positively influence physical health for children by reducing stress, promoting better sleep and enhancing immune functions.

In the educational context, physical exercise is an essential part of mental and psychological well-being, yet here we have a Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in which, if you run a word search through it, there is not one mention of sport, physical activity or even physical education.

In the build-up to and during the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, as chairman of the British Olympic Association, I called for a sports legacy from the Games which would reach every pupil, whether they were in the East End of London or the northern parts of Scotland. The UK needed a radical new national school policy for sport, health and well-being. The situation has deteriorated year on year since then. The Bill turns a blind eye to the importance of physical education and sport and today’s concerns over the well-being of our pupil cohort, and instead recognises a world of growing obesity, declining participation rates, reduced PE hours, poor teacher training, inequalities in access, particularly for girls and children from lower-income backgrounds, and funding cuts. The Youth Sport Trust reports that fewer young people are meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines for daily physical activity, with over 50% of all our pupils failing to reach the recommended 60 minutes, which is a de minimis recommendation of moderate to vigorous activity a day.

There is concern about the decline in the number of PE hours, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Delays or cuts to funding for school sport, with uncertainty over the short-term funding programme for primary PE and sport premium, have led to schools using the funds for purposes not set out by government, and teachers often doing less than three hours of training for physical education during the totality of their teacher training. That is not a child-centric policy.

The pandemic has added to the problems and led to changes in how children play, with more time spent online and less time outdoors impacting their physical activity levels. Children are not learning to swim properly, with a third of primary schools delivering fewer than 10 swimming lessons a year. Yet, as I mentioned, there is not a single mention of any of this in a Bill on children’s well-being. You might as well write a health strategy without mentioning medical treatment.

In Committee, I intend to propose a wide series of amendments to rectify this oversight, to secure improvements to the Bill which place physical as well as mental well-being at the heart of school life. When it comes to school sport, state schools are in crisis: 40% of our medallists in the Tokyo Olympic Games came from just 7% of the population, those educated in the private sector—which is also under threat. It was 36% in London and 33% in Paris.

The noble Lord, Lord Layard, spoke of the vital need to measure well-being, both physical and mental. I could not agree more and will be fully supportive of any amendment which seeks to achieve this objective. Committee provides us with the opportunity to set out the changes necessary to ensure the Secretary of State’s objective—to improve the well-being of children—is achieved, and I look forward to taking that agenda forward.