Labour says the government has risked “salami slicing” school sport by abolishing a requirement that all pupils do at least two hours PE a week. The party is calling for “tough action” to deliver a schools’ sport legacy to match the success of the Olympics. It says recent data suggests just more than about half of children do this much exercise, down from 90% in 2010. This is from the BBC…
The government said it was putting competitive sport at the heart of the new national curriculum.
In a new action plan, launched ahead of Sunday’s BBC Sports Personality of the year final, Labour calls for the two-hour a week of PE requirement to be reinstated.
It argues that the government’s reducing of protection for school playing fields has also risked damage to pupils’ physical education.
The plan calls for Ofsted to focus more closely on inspecting sport provision in all schools including academies and free schools. This would include looking at outdoor facilities and checking how many hours of sport each school provides for pupils.
The party says that in 2010 figures from the School Sport Survey, which has since been abolished, showed that 90% of children did two hours of sport each week.
It compares this with figures from a poll of parents published last month by the Chance to Shine campaign which suggested that 54% thought their children did less than this each week. Some 81% said the amount of school PE on offer had stayed the same or dropped since the Games.
A Department for Education spokesman said: “The two-hour target was never a rule. It was an unenforceable aspiration that schools were free to ignore.
“We are freeing teachers from such unnecessary targets and paperwork which take up too much time better used in the classroom or at the running track.”
He said the government was “putting competitive sport at the heart of the new school curriculum” as well as extending the School Games and spending £1bn on youth sport over the next five years.
More at: School sport at risk, says Labour
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