National Physical Education, School Sport and Club Links Strategy
The national PE, School Sport and Club Links strategy was launched by the Prime Minister in October 2002. It went live in April 2003. The Government is investing £978m between 2003-04 and 2007-08 to deliver the strategy. In addition, £686m lottery funding is enhancing school sports facilities. That means that in total over £1.5 billion is being invested in physical education and school sport in the five years up to 2008.
The DCSF and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have come together to jointly lead the strategy. Its overall objective — a public service agreement target shared by the two Departments — is to enhance the take-up of sporting opportunities by 5 to 16-year-olds. The ambitious target is to increase the percentage of schoolchildren who spend a minimum of two hours a week on high-quality PE and school sport within and beyond the curriculum to 75 per cent by 2006 and 85 per cent by 2008.
The 2006 target has already been beaten. The 2005/06 school sport survey found that 80 per cent of pupils in the 16 800 schools taking part in the survey were spending at least 2 hours in a typical week on high-quality PE and school sport.
The long-term ambition, by 2010, is to offer all children at least four hours of sport every week, made up of:
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at least two hours of high-quality PE and sport at schools — with the expectation that this will be delivered totally within the curriculum; and
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an additional two or more hours beyond the school day delivered by a range of school, community and club providers.
Youth Matters (published on 18 July 2005) is a Green Paper on providing opportunity, challenge and support for young people. It seeks views on how to reform services in England, including sports activities for young people. The proposals include setting new national standards for the activities that all young people would benefit from accessing in their free time. It is proposed that this will include access to two hours per week of sporting activity.
The national strategy is being delivered through nine interlinked workstrands. The first two
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sports colleges
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school sport partnerships
have created a national PE and school sports infrastructure by establishing a network of 450 school sport partnerships (families of schools which work together). There are now also 402 sports colleges.
The remaining seven workstrands
are the tools the schools and partnerships draw on to enable children to take up their two-hour entitlement and move towards the 2010 ambition. There is also additional funding for more coaches and competition managers to work across the network of school sport partnerships. Good progress is being made and the Departments are on track to meet the 2006 target.
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Click here to download the results of the 2005/06 school sport survey.
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Click here to read Ofsted's latest report on the National Strategy which was published on 17 August 2006.
