A NEWCASTLE MP has accused the Government of failing on school sports after revealing a third of 10-year-olds in Newcastle are obese.
Shadow Childrens Minister Catherine McKinnell, Labour MP for Newcastle North, urged Education Secretary Michael Gove to rethink drastic and damaging cuts to support for schools sport.
In a Parliamentary debate, she and other Labour MPs claimed there was still huge uncertainty after the Government sparked fury with its initial plan last year to axe the s162m funding package for school sports partnerships (SSPs).
She told ministers a quarter of year six pupils in her constituency are obese, and the figure rises to a third in the city as a whole.
The Government doesnt seem to have grasped that access to sport in schools helps children achieve more academically, as well as improving health and reducing obesity, Mrs McKinnell said speaking after the debate.
With 33% of Year 6 pupils in Newcastle being classed as obese by the Childrens Services Department of the Citys Council, this is one of the biggest challenges facing young people today and our failure to tackle it will only rack up health costs for the future.
There are also clear benefits in terms of educational attainment for young people who take part in sport. SSPs offered the chance for these benefits to be delivered to all children and young people.
SSPs were established to bring together primary and secondary schools to encourage young people of all ages and abilities to participate in a range of sports.
In a partial U-turn, Mr Gove announced last December that s65m would be invested over the next three years to promote competitive sport, with s47m to allow SSPs to continue up to the end of the academic year in summer 2011.
Under the revised plans, the s65m from the Department for Educations budget, which runs up to the academic year of 2013/14, will allow every secondary school to release one PE teacher for a day a week to continue the work established through the SSPs.
Mrs McKinnell said SSPs were one factor behind the number of young people doing at least two hours of sport a week rising from 25% to 90% between 2002 and 2010 but warned there had been a marked drop since then with a general fall in participation by adults.
All the evidence suggests that cutting funding to school sports is resulting in fewer young people accessing high quality sport opportunities, the Labour MP said in Parliament.
Childrens Minister Tim Loughton said the downturn in sports participation by adults, cited by Mrs McKinnell, demonstrated the problem the Government was tackling.
After the s2.4bn spent on the previous Governments programme since 2003, the idea that sport is a good thing has clearly not embedded itself in the ideas of people moving through school and college and into adulthood.
He joined in praise for volunteers as the backbone of sport in the community, saying ministers wanted to work more closely with schools.
That is one reason why we have given additional funding, through the school games additional funding network to fund further volunteering, said the minister.
