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School Sport

The school games, which were launched last summer, involved more than 10,000 children in the summer pilots. I launched the version in the north-west. They have a particular focus on disability sports, which is something that has very much been missing. They will have a programme of endorsements and accreditations of the schools taking part. That builds on the success of the games that have gone before—sponsored by Sainsbury's, I think—but is taking it to a whole new level. Surely that should be welcomed, but there seems to be a mindset against competitive sport. I find that extraordinary. The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to a quote about learning to ““pick yourself up””. Sport is not just about physical fitness, important though that is. It is about life experiences, socialising, working together as a team, and winning and losing and moving on. That is what competitive sport is designed to achieve. The hon. Gentleman's contribution seemed rather confused. He used the statistic about only 21% of children doing regular competitive sport and talked about wanting to move towards children participating in such activity at least nine times a year. Is it really ambitious to want our kids to be involved in competitive sport nine times a year, particularly after so much money has been spent on trying to embed a culture of sport as a good thing that everyone wants to do on a regular basis in schools?