Laura Williamson column - David Cameron £150m grant for primary school sport too late to capitalise on London 2012 Olympic legacy
It rather grated seeing David Cameron chucking a rugby ball around with kids in Millwall, east London, this weekend — and not only because the track-suited Prime Minister so desperately wanted to beat Lord Coe in a relay race.
No, it jarred because it was an event to mark the Government’s £150m annual investment in primary school sport; an announcement we are all supposed to applaud. It turns out it matters, this getting children to enjoy and embrace sport and PE before they reach secondary school lark.
Well I never.
Legacy: David Cameron announced a £150m investment in primary school sport at a rugby club in Millwall, east London, on Saturday - but it is less than originally promised and too late to capitalise on the Olympic buzzSaturday’s announcement was a step in the right direction, of course, but it still represents a cut in the £162m of ring-fenced cash for School Sport Partnerships (SSPs) that Education Minister Michael Gove so disgracefully slashed in 2010 before partially restoring them in fragmented form.
It is also at least seven months too late, coming long after the buzz of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and therefore missing the ideal time to ‘capitalise on the inspiration’, as Mr Cameron put it.
The symbolism of this investment — delayed, though it is — in primary school sport is important because it shows what anyone with a brain knew anyway, that sport matters, but it is naive to try and dress it up as a truly effective way of delivering an Olympic legacy.
With three different government departments contributing cash, the scheme feels haphazard; a disjointed response to the fact ordinary people — parents, teachers, volunteers — were determined not to let this one go.
They did not argue for the five-star sports facilities of the private sector in their state schools, but they had seen the success of SSPs. They knew that, if you do not capture a child’s enthusiasm for running around by the time they leave primary school, you have probably lost them to the PlayStation forever.
Start 'em young: The sports scheme is designed to capture the imagination of primary school kids at an early ageAt the end of 2010, 90 per cent of pupils were doing PE for at least two hours a week and 78 per cent were taking part in competitive sport.
An Ofsted report said the partnerships had left a ‘notable legacy’ — no thanks, of course, to Mr Gove.
The new initiative will provide £9,250 a year for a primary school with 250 pupils to spend on sport; enough to pay for a specialist PE teacher or coach to work two days a week, for example.
SSPs were organised by the Youth Sport Trust but private firms will now surely be queuing up to provide the personnel. Some will be brilliant, talented and inspirational, but for others it will just be a way to pay for their gap years, or their kids’ gap years.
It feels like it will be luck of the draw, as so often with the way sport is delivered in this country.
An interesting sideline, though, is a pilot scheme to train more primary school teachers to teach PE.
Slashed: Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, cut a sports investment of £162m a year in 2010 and replaced it with a fragmented £150m annual grantI’m sure we all have memories of being dumped on a field while Mr Matthews demonstrated his cover drive or regaled us with tales of how he could have played for Manchester United. Or PE ‘lessons’ where the class spent 30 minutes getting changed and then you spent so long standing still that it was hardly worth the bother.
As Baroness Sue Campbell, chair of the YST pointed out, children’s experience of school sport has long been ‘delivered by teachers who lack the confidence and in some cases the competence to deliver PE well’.
That needs to change. It did once, with the introduction of SSPs, and, hopefully, it will do again.
But please save us the baloney that this investment will ‘benefit a whole generation of children for many years to come’. It is a welcome move forward, but it remains a disgrace an Olympic host nation had to go two steps backwards to get there.
WHAT THEY SAIDWhen asked how he felt about handing back his Olympic 4x400metre relay medal from the Sydney Olympics after team-mate Antonio Pettigrew admitted doping, Michael Johnson rolled his eyes.
‘It was frustrating,’ he said, ‘because we were so good we could have won with anybody in the team, even you.’ Point taken.
Disgraced: The victorious US 4x400m relay team from the Sydney Olympics in 2000 handed back their medals after Antonio Pettigrew (right) admitted to doping WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING THIS WEEK...SPOKE to Jessica Ennis ahead of the Laureus World Sports Awards in Rio de Janeiro. The main topic, as we chatted, was the closure of Don Valley Stadium, 6,000 miles away in Sheffield.
You can take the girls out of Yorkshire…
WATCHED Wales’s emphatic victory over England on Saturday and then listened to all and sundry say defeat was actually a good thing because ‘it will make England stronger’. Would we afford the same courtesy to our football team? I think not…
Dejection: England blew their Grand Slam attempt against Wales, but the experience should 'make them stronger'RACIST chanting marred Tottenham’s 4-1 defeat by Inter Milan. Yet the Italian journalists looked at us English counterparts with incredulity when we asked about it. It is so common they think we are being hyper-sensitive, and that is the scariest thing of all.
PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK
Mickey Arthur’s decision to suspend four players for Australia’s third Test against India in Mohali because they did not do their homework. That was rather wonderful to hear from an English perspective, just four months away from the Ashes, don’t you think?
More... Ministers plan £150m boost for primary school sports in wake of widespread criticism over proposed funding cuts Patrick Collins: Sensational Wales seize moment to take place in folklore Being smashed is tough to take, says Parling as forlorn England go home battered and bruised
