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Michael Gove’s Statement on School Sport Partner

 A new approach for schools sports - decentralising power, incentivising competition, trusting teachers.

Michael Gove has today set out the direction of travel, and initial funding, for the Coalition Government's new approach on school sports. Schools will receive funding to allow PE teachers to further embed competitive sport in schools across the country and raise participation.

Every secondary school will receive funding up to the end of the academic year in 2013 to pay for one day a week of a PE teacher's time to be spent out of the classroom, encouraging greater take-up of competitive sport in primary schools and securing a fixture network for schools to increase the amount of intra- and inter-school competition.

Lottery funding from Sport England will also be deployed to build a framework of competitions as part of the new School Games. Competitions for pupils with disabilities and SEN will be included at every level. All schools will be invited to compete against one another in district competitions, leading to county festivals of competitive sport, and even the chance of appearing in the first national finals in spring 2012 with events at the Olympic Stadium.

This approach will mean that funding and support are there so that school sports partnerships can continue, if schools wish them to, in order to drive an increase in competitive sport.

The Government will also:

• revise the PE curriculum in our curriculum review to place a new emphasis on competitive sports
• invite Dame Kelly Holmes to lead a network of sporting advocates to work with her in promoting school sport around the country and to encourage more young people to participate in sport
• work through Sport England with the national governing bodies of individual sports to get more volunteer sports leaders and coaches into our schools to encourage wider participation
• fund the Youth Sport Trust to expand the Young Ambassadors programme so that every secondary school, and some primary schools too, can appoint ambassadors in the run up to London 2012.

The Coalition Government's new approach marks a departure from the previous strategy.

Previously, PE and Sports strategy was driven by top-down targets, undermined by excessive bureaucracy, limiting the freedom of individual schools on how they used their funding, especially on sports and PE and lacked a proper emphasis on competitive team sports.

We have abolished the targets and the box-ticking that went with it. Instead we will ask schools to list the sports they offer and the fixtures they have arranged on their website so parents and the local community can support children and young people.

We have removed ringfences around the main school funding pot which limited headteachers' powers to spend money as they wished. Schools funding can now be spent through a variety of sources. For the first time schools now have the freedom to choose how they deliver sport in schools. This is a bottom-up, decentralised approach to sport.

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 is therefore announcing time-limited funding to help schools embed this good practice:

• The Department will pay school sport partnerships for the full school year to the end of the summer term 2011 at a cost of £47 million. This will ensure the partnerships and their service can continue until the end of the academic year.
• A further £65 million from the Department's spending review settlement will be paid to enable every secondary school to release one PE teacher for a day a week in the school year 2011/12 and in 2012/13. This will ensure all the benefits of the current system are fully embedded.