Government urged to sort out school crisis

Sports leaders have urged government, schools and society to make 2020 a watershed in ending the gender gap and tackling the national crisis of inactivity. It follows the publication of the annual Sport England Active Lives survey, which showed that 2019 had been a potential turning point in addressing what UK sports leaders have called a “public health emergency”.

Less than half of children are meeting the chief medical officer’s guideline of an average of one hour of sport or activity each day, but that still represented an improvement of 279,600 (3.6 per cent) on 2018. Sport England’s “This Girl Can” campaign had helped to get more women into sport and they have also endorsed The Daily Telegraph’s “Girls, Inspired” campaign, which was launched last April to tackle alarming trends of inactivity among girls. Children from the least affluent families and Asian and black children were also less likely to be active.

The governing bodies of every major sport have jointly written to Boris Johnson’s government to urge at least an hour of sport and physical activity in the school day, and Sport England now wants this Olympic and Paralympic year to act as a further catalyst.

“Two thousand and twenty should be significant far beyond the medals,” said Tim Hollingsworth, the chief executive of Sport England. “It must also be the year when the bigger challenges we face in improving sport and physical activity at all levels are tackled with greater vigour and determination and with more collaboration than ever.”

Despite recent improvements, Hollingsworth said that “nobody should settle” for current inactivity levels and highlighted the clear correlation between being active and children’s happiness, trust of other children, resilience and well-being.

The Government has promised to invest £500million in new youth clubs and services, as well as £17million on teacher training in primary schools, while Sport England is offering targeted investment to make secondary school PE more appealing.

“This should also be the year we take forward even more challenging conversations about the gender gap,” Hollingsworth said. “Much more work is needed to break down barriers.”