Justin Tomlinson MP today spoke in a Parliamentary debate on the importance of safeguarding sport in schools.
In the Westminster Hall debate, Justin focused on three main areas: the school sports partnerships, what is physically going on in schools as we speak and wider community access to schools.
On school sports partnerships, Justin spoke about the challenge that the removal of the ring fence from sports funding in schools poses.
"The challenge that remains for school sports partnerships is that not every school necessarily identifies sport as a priority. In Swindon, a number of schools have decided that there are other priorities for that money and, by removing ring-fencing from the funding, they are free to make that choice. I think that such a choice is wrong for those schools and when I meet those who work in them, I regularly push the benefits of providing sport. There are some advantages to the changes that have been introduced, but we need to work out a way to ensure that schools continue to see sport as a priority."
On what is happening in schools at the moment, Justin focused on the problem of insurance.
"The majority of teachers are relatively young, and young people are very expensive to insure. We need to be able to bus pupils around in order to promote school games and take them to learn outside the traditional school environment. I keep urging the Government to consider a national deal; schools throughout the country purchase things, so surely, as a collective with huge economies of scale, we should be able to get a better deal from the insurance industry. I encourage that.
"I have been told by a local physical education teacher, Julie Lewis, about a second element in relation to insurance. In order to drive a minibus, the driver needs a certain D-class element on their licence. The younger teachers now have to do three days of training, which costs about £2,000, so that is another burden that the school has to weigh up: when budgets are tight, is it worth releasing teachers for three days? All too many schools like the idea of doing it, but they cannot afford it, either because of the cash or because they do not have the time to release teachers."
Justin concluded by addressing wider community access to schools, namely, the issue of the cost of access to school sports facilities after hours.
"The vast majority of schools that were built post-1997 were private finance initiative schools, so they had wonderful playing fields, but after 4 o’clock, a huge amount of money had to be paid to use them. Sports facilities need to be accessible both to the school itself—it is a crime that an enthusiastic PE teacher who wishes to provide after-school sports opportunities cannot do so because it is not the school’s facility—and to the community through sports clubs.
"Opening up those facilities should be an absolute priority not only for sports clubs but for youth clubs. Street dance is the classic example; it is not technically an ultra-competitive sport but is something in which young people wish to engage. We can use sport as the hook in the school facilities, and youth workers can come along to where children are being active and can provide the advocacy that youth clubs are normally good at."