Stephen Timms – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2016-02-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to improve links between schools and elite sports organisations.
Edward Timpson
The national curriculum sets out the expectation that pupils should be provided with opportunities to engage in a broad range of competitive sports and activities.
Many national governing bodies of sports and elite sporting organisations offer a programme for schools, to engage children and young people in their sports. Through their school sports programme, the Premier League is currently working in over 4,000 schools to support the PE curriculum, provide sports clubs, and deliver enrichment activities. In October 2015, the Premier League announced that they will expand their schools offer to every primary school in the country within 6 years.
The Department funds ‘On the Front Foot’, a programme designed and delivered by Premiership Rugby to develop character and resilience in primary and secondary schools across the country. The programme delivers classroom based and physical activity character building programmes to 17,250 pupils.
The Football Association’s Skills programme is a nationwide football coaching programme working in over 1,000 primary schools a year, providing specialist football coaching for children and supporting teachers in their delivery of sport. Sessions are offered during PE lessons, extra-curricula clubs and holiday clubs.
The Tennis Foundation and the Lawn Tennis Association support teachers with training, resource and equipment to help them deliver tennis in schools. Their aim is to increase access to tennis across schools, further and higher education through a wide range of programmes. They offer support to make tennis inclusive and accessible to all pupils. Over 60,000 primary, special and secondary school pupils take part in schools tennis competitions every year.
The Rugby Football Union works with hundreds of maintained schools as part of its ‘All Schools Plan’ to help more secondary school children play rugby. This was launched by the RFU and the Rugby Football Foundation in 2012, as part of the RFU’s Rugby World Cup 2015 legacy plans.
The School Games is the Government’s framework for competitive school sports. The programme provides a national final event where the most talented young people in the UK compete in 12 different sports. More than 150 of the athletes who competed at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow had previously competed at the School Games and 59 athletes claimed 84 medals.
