A PE teaching coordinator laments the changes to school sport which he believes have undermined an effective network.
“I coordinate primary school sports teaching in my area. From 2008 to 2011 I worked for a school sport partnership (SSP) – until my organisation was scrapped – and I now continue to do the same role for a private company.
At the SSP I was a partnership development manager, meaning the strategic lead for physical education (PE) teaching in my area. There were 450 of us across the country and the programme ran from 2003.
We had a block grant of funding to spend on bringing secondary school PE teachers into primary schools to lead lessons there. They were released from their timetables for two days and their schools would claim part of the grant.
My role was to coordinate their effective deployment into schools. Our aim was to improve the quality of PE teaching in primary schools and also to inspire young people to pursue new sporting opportunities. In primary schools, many teachers are under-trained and under-confident delivering PE lessons, and our programme supported the development of these teachers.
It was also positive for the secondary schools to get involved because their staff would benefit by doing advocacy work in the local feeder schools, building the reputation of the secondary school and also learning new skills.
We coordinated competitions, ‘gifted and talented’ clubs, training courses, special educational needs groups, healthy weight programmes, and the use of secondary school facilities by local primary schools and sports clubs. This work all related to the government’s PE strategy and its target of offering young people five hours of sport each week.
The coalition announced the decision to cut our funding in October 2010, citing poor performance against set targets as a reason for disbanding us. The funding ended in August 2011 and lots of friends and colleagues lost their jobs.
Now, I manage a company providing a similar service. We rely on a small amount of funding from the Department for Education, plus money directly from schools and the local authority. Many people who work in PE are motivated by sport and young people, but there are real barriers across the country now that we lack funding.
The grant that was given to SSPs was cut and now a small contribution goes directly to schools. It’s up to them where to spend the money – it isn’t ringfenced – and given budgetary pressures many headteachers allocate the funding elsewhere in schools. More than half of our local schools are not using the money to release teachers to primary schools.
Schools now have to pay for more services locally, putting more pressure on their spending. This has resulted in many schools being cautious about investing in services until they are clearer about how much money they can afford to spend.
This is why so many schools are thinking of going to academy status: they benefit from fewer government constraints and more funding. In the last year, we’ve had three local schools become academies.
The biggest catalyst for inspiring young people to take part in PE is the upcoming Olympics in 2012. It’s frustrating that, for primary schools, the system has become so fragmented and differs nationally from area to area in the lead-up to the games. It’s impossible for us to do as much as we would like to do with the Olympics because the school sport network has largely disappeared. The Olympics hasn’t galvanised the government to invest in sport; they’ve cut funding and gone back on many of their promises.
The mounting issues around poor health in young people only highlight the problems we are facing in the long term. Childhood obesity is a huge problem in our area but there is less funding to tackle this issue and provide a preventative service. These young people will suffer from health-related issues as they grow older and become a burden on the NHS. Less school sport means less physical activity, particularly for those who already fall into the inactive category.
With the launch of the national school games school sport has also become more focused on competition under the coalition. Under the previous government, the PE strategy was more inclusive and varied. Now it’s about competition, which is naturally more selective. Many young people love sport but don’t enjoy competition, particularly the traditional sports that the government is focused on.
I think the changes to school sports funding have devastated a well-established network of SSPs. On the eve of the Olympics, it’s sad that our school sport system has become so fragmented. All the government’s promises to provide an ongoing legacy are unlikely to materialise. Nonetheless, I will continue to try to build up my business, providing better services to schools.”