Education secretary announces he has found £112m to continue schools sport partnerships across England
Michael Gove today performed a major U-turn by agreeing to continue funding the schools sports system in England he had previously pledged to scrap.
The education secretary announced he had found £112m of new money to ensure the continuation of the 450 school sport partnerships (SSPs) across England, which encourage pupils to take part in games both at school and between schools.
Gove caused a huge outcry in October when he announced that his Department for Education (DfE) would no longer fund the £162m-a-year system. That sparked heavy criticism from headteachers, Olympic sportspeople, Labour, young people, sections of the media and, privately, some Conservative MPs.
The Guardian revealed on Saturday that Gove had been forced into a rethink after the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, persuaded David Cameron that the issue was making the government look out of touch.
Today Gove said he would pay £47m to keep the SSPs going until summer 2011. They were originally due to lose all their funding from the end of next March.
A further £65m will also guarantee that all schools can release one PE teacher for one day a week from 2011 to 2013, to promote pupils' participation in a range of PE and sporting activities – a key feature of the current system.
Gove's move represents a large U-turn by a high-profile minister. One Whitehall insider involved in the discussions preceding today's rethink said that Gove had made a mistake by announcing the end of the existing school sports system without having a viable alternative in place.
That decision, announced as part of the comprehensive spending review in October, prompted claims that childhood obesity would rise if children were deprived of access to sporting pursuits, and that the UK was in danger of betraying its pledge to use the 2012 Olympics to increase young people's levels of physical activity.
Gove sought to portray today's announcement as the beginning of the new system of school sport that he had previously said he wanted, putting extra emphasis on competitive, inter-school sport, but without specifying how that would happen. But what he called "a new approach for school sports" is very similar to how that key part of school activity is already organised.
"I want competitive sport to be at the centre of a truly rounded education that all schools offer. But this must be led by schools and parents, not by top-down policies from Whitehall," Gove said. "It's time to ensure what was best in school sport partnerships around the country is fully embedded and move forward to a system where schools and parents are delivering on sports with competition at the heart.
"This will take some time and I'm pleased to be able to confirm some funding for school sports partnerships during this transition. But I'm looking to PE teachers to embed sport and put more emphasis on competitions for more pupils in their own schools, and to continue to help the teachers in local primary schools do the same," he added.
Clarifying the new arrangements, the DfE said: "As we move towards a system where schools enjoy progressively greater freedom over how they spend money, it is important that we do not lose the benefits of those aspects of the existing school sports infrastructure which have brought real benefits.
"The government recognises the good work that school sport partnerships, and national bodies such as the Youth Sports Trust, Sport England, the Association for PE, Sportscoach UK, and many national governing bodies of sport, have done in supporting sport in schools and wants to ensure that there is a smooth transition to this new system."
The department said that "time-limited funding" would "help schools embed this good practice". The £47m will pay for SSPs to carry on until the end of next year's summer term. "This will ensure the partnerships and their service can continue until the end of the academic year," it said.
There will also be an as yet unspecified amount of money coming from the quango Sport England, to help get schools involved in Hunt's brainchild, a new annual "School Olympics"; while the Department of Health will also be putting in up to £14m to encourage physical activity among primary schoolchildren, taking the government's total spending announced today to £126m.
Olympic double gold medallist Kelly Holmes, a vocal critic of Gove's original decision, has agreed to lead a new network of "sporting advocates" to help drive up participation.
Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, welcomed the rethink, but said that its limited nature meant it only deserved "one cheer at best".
"David Cameron and Michael Gove have spent weeks seeking to justify a bad decision with dodgy statistics," said Burnham. "Gove's overruling by the prime minister is a victory for thousands of young people, teachers and athletes, and is a warning to this government that it cannot simply do what it likes. But this package from the government, after weeks of scrabbling round for funding to save something it branded a 'complete failure', only raises one cheer at best."
Children would still lose out on sporting opportunities despite today's announcement, Burnham added. "So today, in conceding the success of Labour's school sports partnerships, the government has nevertheless failed to put in place a proper funding package that will allow us to capitalise on the excitement of the 2012 games. We are still looking at the prospect of fewer children playing sport in the run-up to the Olympics, and no answer on what will happen to school sport following the games."
Ivan Lewis, the shadow culture secretary, also welcomed the move, but added that "the government's new package is muddled and leaves many questions unanswered. There is a real risk that the reduction in the time available to school sport coordinators will lead to a reduction in young people's participation in sport. This is ludicrous at a time when we should be making this the centrepiece of our Olympic legacy and the fight against child obesity. We will judge the impact of these changes by whether the tremendous advances in school sport over the past few years are maintained and built upon."
Brigid Simmonds, the chair of the Sport and Recreation Alliance, which represents 340 sports governing bodies across the UK, added: "The legacy [from 2012] will only work if government invests time and money in sport – and that includes school sport.
"School sport needs investment to thrive. One in five children leaves primary school obese and that's something government needs to act on. School sport is a critical part of helping children to understand their skills and capacities but teaching it well requires expertise and experience, something which some primary schools don't have in-house.
"The government has recognised that voluntary sport is already stretched to the limit and that cutting school sport funding back so dramatically would damage our sports infrastructure."