Football: Females

(asked on 21st April 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions his Department has had with Ministerial colleagues of the Department for Education on plans to provide support to help increase participation in girl's football in primary schools.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 26th April 2021

Sports and physical activity are crucial for our mental and physical health. The Chief Medical Officer is clear that being physically active is important to long-term health and crucial for keeping people healthy. That’s why we have continued to make sure that people can exercise throughout the national restrictions, and why we have ensured that grassroots and children’s sport was at the front of the queue when easing those restrictions.

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 football for girls.

The Secretary of State for Education and the Culture Secretary jointly hosted a school sport roundtable in March where the English FA were represented. 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.

Minister Gibb and I also recently met with Baroness Sue Campbell, Director of Women's Football at the FA, to discuss PE and school sport including the work that Baroness Campbell is doing to increase the numbers of girls playing football in schools.

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