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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the new standards for equal access to sports announced by her Department on 8 March 2023, what plans her Department has to monitor the impact of the (a) standard and (b) associated funding on the participation of young girls in sport.

The government is committed to supporting women's sport at every opportunity including pushing for greater participation.

In March this year, the government announced a significant package of over £600 million to boost school sport, including confirmation of funding for the PE and School Sport Premium and the School Games Organisers network until the end of the summer term 2025. These programmes will improve the quality of PE and sports in primary schools to help children benefit from regular activity and ensure girls and boys have equal opportunity to play sport in school. The Department for Education will be introducing a new digital tool to hold schools accountable for how they use their PE and sport premium funding allocation to monitor and improve the quality of PE and sport they provide.

We are also investing over £300 million in grassroots football and multi-sport facilities across the UK by 2025 which will further support women and girls accessing sport. Projects in England will need to have a clear women and girls plan to receive this funding. Projects are monitored regularly to ensure the objectives are met.

We recently published our first sports strategy in eight years. This includes our ambition to provide the infrastructure and conditions needed to get as many women and girls involved in sport. The government will work with Sport England to monitor the impact of this ambition including measuring the progress made in tackling inactivity annually through the Active Lives Children survey, and in real time by seeking new sources of data that allow us to monitor progress.