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School Sport

I absolutely do, and I will come to that point shortly. There are some advantages to the changes that have been introduced, but we need to work out a way to ensure that schools continue to see sport as a priority. There was another reason why we had to look again at how the school sports partnerships worked. In my constituency, it was a very good partnership, but we heard in the debates on the subject that in other constituencies people who work in schools were saying, ““They aren't delivering very much. I am very passionate about sport as a head teacher. I would like to employ my own choice of sports coach directly.”” To a certain extent, therefore, some schools now have better provision, because they have gone directly to the person they think can provide sporting provision in the areas where they had gaps. It is also fair to say that the school sports partnerships that are still in existence, including my own in Swindon, have had to step up their performance, because that cheque is no longer guaranteed. They have to go to schools and make a pitch about how they will deliver additional benefits to them. There is still a role to play, however, in helping those SSPs to be in a position to deliver improvements, because, by and large, they are sports enthusiasts and are particularly good at organising sports events. They are not necessarily geared up to be a semi-business—a not-for-profit business—so there should be a role to provide additional help in that way. In response to the intervention, I would like to see SSPs identify additional partnership opportunities, not just through the private sector, but through working with local authorities, the local NHS and sports forums and local sports clubs. To give a good example, if a school offered only football every week and wanted the SSP to bring in street dance, it should bring in not a one-off coach, but representations from street dance clubs, so that children who enjoy a taster session in school then have the opportunity to join a club and take up the activity on a regular basis. Local authorities can play an important role in that regard. The equivalents of the lead members for leisure and the key officers should sit down with the SSP organisations and say, ““You can bring the following people to the table and we'll help co-ordinate that,”” so when the SSP then pitches to individual schools, it will be able say that it will not only provide two hours of street dance, but will bring in supporting clubs and give advice on nutrition and on how to do a variety of other beneficial tasks above and beyond the obvious reasons for it to go into the school. That is about asking what more we can do to make SSPs seem much more attractive to schools and to keep sport as a priority. On what is happening in schools at the moment, I would like to see changes in relation to two particular challenges. The first is the cost of insurance, which is an issue that I have raised in a number of debates. The majority of teachers are relatively young, and young people are very expensive to insure. We need to be able to bus pupils around in order to promote school games and take them to learn outside the traditional school environment. Many teachers are young and new recruits are getting younger, so the cost for schools—it is a burden—is incredibly expensive. I keep urging the Government to consider a national deal; schools throughout the country purchase things, so surely, as a collective with huge economies of scale, we should be able to get a better deal from the insurance industry. I encourage that. I have been told by an inspirational local physical education teacher, Julie Lewis, about a second element in relation to insurance. In order to drive a minibus, the driver needs a certain D-class element on their licence. Julie already had that—she is of a similar age to me—so it was a relatively simple process. She just had to go to the local authority and carry out a simple test. She passed and was then able to drive the minibus. The younger teachers now have to do three days of training, which costs about £2,000, so that is another burden that the school has to weigh up: when budgets are tight, is it worth releasing teachers for three days? All too many schools like the idea of doing it, but they cannot afford it, either because of the cash or because they do not have the time to release teachers. We need to look at that. PE teachers also face a dichotomy in relation to their priorities. Julie told me that she is extremely keen to provide after-school clubs. The children love them and embrace them, and really want to take them up. If she could offer as many sessions as she would like, they would all be full. However, she has to plan them at the same time as she should be planning her lessons, and planning her lessons to make sure that they are delivered in the correct manner is what is judged by Ofsted to determine whether she is a good PE teacher and whether the school is a good school. There is a clash; one area is being judged and rewarded, but it is as if she has to magic up a way of providing the after-school classes that might be of most benefit to the children. I have talked to other teachers. A friend of mine worked in a challenging school in Oxford. During his first year as a qualified teacher, he was full of enthusiasm and provided a huge range of after-school sports clubs. They helped with behaviour and with tackling crime in the local area, because the children were not hanging around street corners straight after school. They were doing something constructive and positive. My friend then had the opportunity to do one-on-one tuition, for which he was paid. He could not be in two places at once. His heart said that he wanted to do his bit for the children he was there to inspire and for whom he played a positive role, but his brain said that he wanted to go on holiday and that he needed to buy a new laptop. In the end, the financial reward prevailed.