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School Sports Funding

I want to use my few minutes to tell the House what the decision means in my constituency, in Tameside and Oldham. Both the New Charter academy in Tameside and Failsworth school in Oldham have made remarkable progress since they attained sports college status. The improvement in results and the progress made by students at both schools have been tremendous, and that applies right across the curriculum, not just to sporting achievement. Those two schools are the basis of school sport partnerships in their boroughs, each covering a group of secondary schools, colleges and 30-odd primary schools. The SSP funding pays not only for the partnership development managers, but for their teams of part-time sports co-ordinators and primary liaison teachers—all teachers, not bureaucrats. In the Failsworth partnership, regular participation in competitive sport stands at 45%, and in Tameside the figure has reached 62%, the third highest participation level nationally last year. In Tameside and Oldham, physical education and school sports have been transformed by school sport partnerships, and it is a tragedy that all this hard work and achievement risk being blown apart by this ill-conceived and spiteful cut. While the most noticeable progress has been made in the sports colleges, it is in the primary and special needs sectors that the cut will have the cruellest impact. In the words of Emma Heap, the Tameside development manager:"““These measures will take us back ten years.””" The loss of dedicated SSP funding, of infrastructure and of facilitation and partnership work will inevitably lead to piecemeal, patchy sports provision in the primary sector. Talent will not be spotted at an early enough age for children to become Olympians or sports professionals, and the opportunity to develop transferable skills such as teamwork, leadership and volunteering—all of which can be developed through sport—will be lost. Some of our greatest sporting achievements in recent years have been in the Paralympics, and I wonder what thought the Secretary of State has given to the potential damage he is doing to our ability to spot and nurture sporting talent among students with disabilities by doing away with SSPs.