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School Sports Funding

It certainly does. Such stories, much more than statistics, illustrate the success of what has been achieved. I felt a raw injustice on this issue because I saw that such opportunities were not available in the 1980s, although they are the right of all young people. When I came into politics, I wanted to do something about it. As an adviser to the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, I encouraged him to set up a lottery programme under the New Opportunities Fund called ““active sports co-ordinators””. It was the start of the school sports programme. A BBC report in 1999 said:"““The first wave of sports co-ordinators to boost competitive sports in schools will be in place within the next year””." It is a total myth to say that they have not boosted competitive sport. They have succeeded in that regard. The coalition says that only one in five pupils play inter-school competitive sport regularly—that is, nine times a year. I have two comments to make. First, that represents a big increase on the proportion many years ago. In itself, it is an impressive figure. However, it is only part of the story. Last year, 49% of children took part in inter-school competition, playing on at least one occasion. There was also a large increase in the number of pupils taking part in intra-school competition: it rose from 69% in the preceding year to 78%.