Olympic Sports/GCSE PE

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Children and Families (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) on securing the debate. I know that she is passionate about sport and physical activity and is a keen follower of a number of sports teams, including, I understand, the Leicester Tigers.

Like my right hon. Friend, the Government are committed to ensuring that all pupils are healthy and active, which is why PE remains compulsory at all four key stages in the national curriculum. It is also why, through the primary PE and sport premium, we have invested more than £600 million of ring-fenced funding for primary schools to improve PE and sport since 2013 and have doubled that funding to £320 million a year from this September.

My right hon. Friend raises the issue of some Olympic sports not being included in the activity list for PE GCSE. We should all be incredibly proud of the recent performances of our Olympians and Paralympians. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, Team GB became the first team to win more medals at a games immediately after hosting them. They won 67 medals—the most since 1908—and came second in the medal table. ParalympicsGB also finished second in the medal table, winning 147 medals—the most since national lottery funding began. Indeed, I could expand as to where Yorkshire would have ranked in the medal table if it were an independent country—but I will not.

Not all Olympic sports are included in the PE GCSE activity list, but their inclusion or non-inclusion does not represent a view on the legitimacy or value of the activity. The revised PE GCSE was first taught in September 2016, as part of wider Government reforms to ensure that qualifications are high quality, demanding and academically rigorous and prepare students for further and higher education and, of course, employment. For PE, the subject content was revised to address comments that the current GCSE and A-level were not of comparable rigour to other subjects, did not provide suitable progression and had led to inequalities in assessment.

As part of the revisions, awarding organisations proposed revising the list of activities that could be assessed in the practical element of the course. That was to ensure that all the activities reflected Ofqual’s principles that non-exam assessment should ensure sound assessment practice, be manageable and ensure that a qualification is not easily distorted. In determining which activities should be included in the list, awarding organisations considered the range and demand of skills and techniques in the activity; the application of tactics and strategy in the activity; the ability to develop skills over a significant time; whether there were suitable conditions in which to perform; and whether the level of performance could realistically be assessed by PE practitioners—probably the key point in this situation.

[Anna Soubry]

I should say for the record that I am a lifelong supporter of Notts County; I watch Nottingham Forest as well; and I enjoy watching Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. I wanted to put that on the record, but I am very serious about this issue. Does the Minister agree that in the modern world, as Mr Baldwin points out to me, PE teachers are of course perfectly capable, through their knowledge of the subject, of assessing performance in all sports? They particularly rely on videos, and they have those skills, those abilities, so even if it is an unusual sport, they can test someone’s performance. And let me add that as well as judo, fencing, pentathlon, sailing, shooting, archery and many other Olympic sports have been removed from the list.

[Mr Goodwill]

I hear what my right hon. Friend says, but the feedback from the awarding organisations was that, in some cases, the proficiency was not there across the country to assess some of these sports. When applicants put in for a GCSE exam, they may not necessarily all be of Olympic standard, and it is important that assessments can be made across the ability range in these sports. Often, specialist skills and knowledge are needed for some of the sports to make the assessment.

I understand that for some pupils, such as Kyle, the revisions to the activity list may be frustrating, but in many cases, pupils who excel in sports that are not on the activity list will also be highly proficient in a range of other sports that are included. It is important that GCSE PE can be assessed reliably and that the activities included in the list are of comparable demand among pupils and are manageable for schools to assess. I have discussed the issue with the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), and we agree that it is simply not practical to expect that every sport can be assessed as part of GCSE PE. Indeed, I bumped into her on the way to this debate and mentioned that it was taking place.

As we previously committed to doing, the Government will review the activity list in autumn 2018, following the first examinations next summer. We will agree that process with the exam boards and announce details closer to the time.

In the case of my right hon. Friend’s constituent, Kyle Ross-Waddell, I understand that he is on the short track speed-skating talent pathway. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate him on the progress that he is making and to wish him the very best for his future development.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister takes a keen interest in this area, but surely, if Kyle proves to be successful, we will cheer every bit as loudly for his success as we will for anyone in any of the other sports in the Olympics, so we should rightly be celebrating and encouraging sporting excellence in all the sports that count in the Olympics.

[Mr Goodwill]

Of course we should celebrate sporting excellence, but a number of sports may not be particularly practical for schools to offer. For example, clay pigeon shooting is an Olympic sport, but I suspect that concerns would be raised were it to be a sport taught in schools.

In terms of practicality for teachers, my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe said that the decision was arbitrary. It was not arbitrary: the list has been reduced considerably to ensure that a PE practitioner will be able to recognise the key skills and fluency of movement in the activities proposed. The awarding organisations have removed activities that are so specialist or niche that specific expertise in the activity is required to assess them. An example is martial arts, which have been mentioned. For a number of activities used in previous specifications, experience suggested that teachers and moderators were often unfamiliar and at times uncomfortable with the assessment of them and were relying too heavily on outside expertise to inform assessment decisions.

Again, I thank my right hon. Friend for calling the debate and I reiterate that the inclusion or non-inclusion of sports in the activity list does not represent a view on their legitimacy or value. Today’s debate will be helpful in further shaping our thinking on the activity list, and we will provide further details of the review next year.

I wish Kyle all the best in his PE GCSE and in the other subjects that he is taking. I rather suspect that if he does stand on the podium at a future Olympics, people will not be looking too closely at what grade he got in his PE GCSE, although I understand from his school that he is expected to excel in the sports that he is currently taking.

Question put and agreed to.