UK Edition
Physical education should sit alongside English and maths as a core national curriculum subject to tackle a “generational crisis” in physical inactivity, says a new parliamentary report.
The 144-page document, written by the Lord’s Sport and Recreation Committee, says that Governments have “failed” to translate the London 2012 Games into a legacy of a more active nation and that a radical new action plan should be urgently implemented.
This would include a new Minister for Sport, Health and Wellbeing that would sit at the heart of government within the Department of Health and Social Care.
The proposals coincide with new Sport England data showing that four million children (55.4 per cent) failed to meet minimum recommended activity levels during the 2020-21 academic year.
The Active Lives survey, which relates to a period when there were two national lockdowns, also shows that 283,000 children became less active compared to the pre-pandemic period.
Chief medical officer Chris Whitty recommends that children are active for an average of 60 minutes a day, but almost a third of five to 16-year-olds in the country did not reach half that figure.
Secondary school boys were especially negatively impacted by the pandemic, dropping behind girls in their teenage years for the first time, but there were also stark differences for people from less affluent families as well as black and Asian children.
Baroness Grey Thompson, the 12-times Paralympic champion, former sports minister Lord Moynihan and West Ham United vice-chairman Baroness Brady are among those on the select committee which has been investigating the issue.
The Telegraph launched its Keep Kids Active campaign last winter and, after successfully pushing for children’s sport to be the first activity back from lockdown, the committee also echoed our call to place PE on a par with core academic subjects like maths, English and science.
With hundreds of leisure centres and swimming pools threatened by permanent closure, the committee is also urging Government to provide treasury support for statutory funding of public leisure. The report said that local government expenditure on parks, recreation and leisure centres had fallen from £1.6 billion to £1 billion since 2010 and described current funding structures as “not fit for purpose”.
The Youth Sports Trust says that there is a “generational crisis” of inactivity and called for an urgent national plan.
“The stark reality of a generation where millions of young people are inactive now has to serve as a wake-up call for change,” said Alison Oliver, the chief executive of the Youth Sports Trust.
Lord Willis, the committee chair, said that he was shocked by many of their findings, including how primary school teachers do not receive more than a few hours of PE training.
“The fact that it is not a compulsory core subject in primary schools really quite staggers us and we wonder why kids are less active,” he said. “If you invest in the health of the nation when it is relatively young, the benefits massively outweigh the costs. The state of our facilities is at a knife edge - we are seeing swimming pools and sports centres close.”
One of the most alarming findings in the new Sport England survey was that 850,000 fewer children and young people had swam between September 2020 and July 2021. It contributed to a significant drops in the number of children who can swim 25 metres unaided. The correlation between family affluence and being able to swim was especially stark, with more than three quarters of children from high affluence families able to swim 25 metres unaided compared to just a third from low-affluence families.
Lord Moynihan, who was sports minister in the Thatcher government before becoming the chair of the British Olympic Olympic Association, said sport, health and wellbeing must now be at the centre of government policy. “Physical activity can and must be a major factor in redirecting our health policy away from simply addressing illness to preventative work,” he said. “We have flatlined in terms of participation. We had a great [Olympic and Paralympic] legacy for the East End of London but we didn't have a sports legacy. The pandemic has worsened that situation.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson said that implementing a national plan was “about protecting and saving the NHS” and stressed the critical importance of imbedding physical literacy in primary schools. “We don't expect children to learn trigonometry without basic maths yet we expect children to play sports without learning all the basic steps in between,” she said.
The total number of children deemed ‘active’ has fallen by 94,000 compared to before the pandemic although overall activity rates did remain similar to the previous academic year of 2019-20.
The biggest drop was among secondary school age boys, with 42 per cent meeting the recommended activity levels compared to 50 per cent the previous year. The girls, by contrast, registered an annual increase and went up to 46 per cent. Lisa O’Keefe, Sport’s England’s insight director, stressed how girls were less impacted by the suspension of organised sport during the various lockdowns and actually found alternative activities that may have suited them better. Activities which rose in popularity included walking, running, dance, and gym or fitness classes.