Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has plans to help increase access to football training for girls in schools.

The Department’s expectation is that a school’s starting point should be to offer the same sport or physical activity to both girls and boys, including football.

The Department is funding the ‘Your Time’ Programme, which gives girls aged 8-16 access to competitive sport and sport leadership opportunities, including football. The PE and Sport Premium of £320 million a year will continue to help primary schools to make sustainable improvements to their PE and sport offer.

The Government wants to increase opportunities to take part in all types of sport and physical activity and has committed to update the cross-government School Sport and Activity Action Plan to support all pupils to take part in a wide variety of sport and activities through PE, extracurricular sport and 30 minutes of physical activity every day in school.