Alliance welcomes new government funding for school sport

The government has announced £150 million new funding into school sport this morning, focusing on primary level.

The new school sports policy, as reported by the Guardian and the BBC, includes:

• £150 million per year ring-fenced funding for two years allocated directly to school heads
• funding allocation based on a pupil premium model
• routine OFSTED inspections of PE lessons
• a pilot teacher training programme providing national governing body qualifications to primary teachers so that they become specialists
• investment in County Sports Partnerships to link national governing bodies effectively with schools
• continued funding of the School Games
• continued funding of the Young Ambassador programme twith 2,500 new Ambassadors to be trained.

The new policy will focus less on competitive sport and more on physical literacy and getting the basics right at primary level which the Alliance, its members and the Youth Sport Trust have been calling for.

Andy Reed, chair of the Sport and Recreation Alliance said:

“It’s a policy that will tick a lot of the boxes. There’s investment, there’s ring-fencing, there’s NGB involvement and there’s measurement, all of which were at the top of the list for sports bodies. There was a glaring gap in the government’s Olympic legacy plans and this policy addresses that.

“This is an acknowledgement that PE and sport should play a central role in every pupil’s experience and that the skills they give children are as important as being able to read, write and add. It also recognises that it makes sense for schools to draw on the expertise of governing bodies as early and as deeply as practical.

“Ministers should encourage heads to embrace the wide variety of physical activity on offer to them so that every child can find something that they like.

“If you want to author a book, you learn to read and write first. It’s the same with physical activity – if you want a child to become involved in sport, you first need to teach them to run, catch and jump and that’s why physical literacy is so important and why it should be part of every child’s school life.”

For media enquiries contact Libby Jellie: 07834 726 224.

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