Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of (a) getting young people engaged in sport and fitness early and (b) encouraging schools to implement initiatives such as The Daily Mile in order to help combat obesity in children.

This government is committed to promoting physical activity among young people and we want all pupils to be healthy and active. PE remains a compulsory subject at all four key stages in the national curriculum, and this sets out the expectation that pupils should be physically active for sustained periods of time. Schools have the flexibility to use the primary PE and sport premium, worth £160m this year, to improve the quality of the physical activity offer to their pupils. From 2017 we are doubling the primary PE and sport premium to £320m a year, and the forthcoming childhood obesity strategy will contain a number of measures which will complement our existing policies to promote physical activity for primary pupils.