Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department takes to work with the Department for Education to promote cricket in state-funded schools.

My department works closely with the Department for Education on school sport provision. Schools are free to organise and deliver a flexible, diverse and challenging Physical Education curriculum that suits the needs of all their pupils, which can include cricket. Both departments regularly engage with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

The ECB is actively engaged with 5,500 state schools, working with a quarter of all primary schools and 15,000 teachers. The ECB engages over half a million school children every year, including work through their charity partner Chance to Shine.

The ECB were represented at a school sport roundtable in March, jointly hosted by the Secretary of State for Education and the Culture Secretary. This roundtable launched our ongoing work to bring together a sports sector offer to support schools through an active summer recovery term, and on into the summer holidays, in order to get children and young people active again.