Comment: Betraying sport

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School sport promotes fitness at a time when the threat from obesity is greater than ever. It encourages teamwork and discipline and provides an outlet for potentially disruptive energies.

Ministers, most recently Culture Secretary Andy
Burnham, have reiterated their commitment to increasing the number of hours of sport that school pupils do each week.

Our survey today makes sober reading. It shows that of eight new academies opening this week in London, costing a total of £220 million, not one has a swimming pool — even though swimming is on the curriculum — and only three have running tracks, tennis courts, grass playing fields or gyms. In one, the new Pimlico Academy, the school has actually lost the pool that the old Pimlico School had. Meanwhile, Chobham Academy, which is being built on the Olympic site and was supposed to specialise in sports, is having its focus switched to music and drama.

Already those secondary schools being renovated as part of the vast £45 billion Building Schools for the Future programme do not usually get funds for swimming pools. Where there are no council pools or playing fields locally, building entirely new schools with inadequate or even minimal sports facilities is short-sighted.

Ministers must ensure that new schools have the facilities to allow children real opportunities in sport — otherwise the official promises of school sport for every child amount to no more than words.