Park House head urges extension to school sport funding

Earlier this year, Mr Peaple submitted written and oral evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee expressing concerns over the Government’s plan to scrap funding for School Sports Co-ordinators by 2015.
Mr Peaple warned that without a solid infrastructure and continued funding, the Olympic Legacy would “rapidly and significantly diminish”.
The Government has since introduced ‘primary school premiums’, which will see every primary school awarded between £8,500 and £9,500 on improving sports, ut these are currently only planned until 2015.
Now, after hearing evidence from Mr Peaple and other sporting figures, the House of Commons Education Committee has written to the government to set out a series of recommendations.
The report, called ‘School Sport Following London 2012: No More Political Football’, says the Government must match long-term vision with long term funding to avoid losing the legacy. It also says the Department for Education needs to do more work to make its guidance on the effective use of the primary sport premium as practical and useable as possible and concludes that on its own, the primary sport premium is inadequate.
The report also recommends that the Government sets out a plan for the sustained support and development of its school sports policy and devises a new strategy for school sports that builds on the strengths of the previous school sport partnership model. It also concludes that further action is needed to ensure that the 2012 legacy in schools benefits all children and lasts beyond the two years of the primary sports premium.
Mr Peaple, who is also Chair of the Berkshire School Games Local Organising Committee, said it was a positive move – but also stressed that there was more work to be done.
He said: “What these primary school premiums have done is temporarily re-opened the window of opportunity that looked like it was going to be closed.
“The report really captured the views and evidence I had submitted and recognises that funding needs to be extended, which I’m delighted about.
“Hopefully these recommendations will be taken on board now and they will agree to put primary school premiums in place beyond 2015.”
It comes after Get Berkshire Active recently revealed that there had been a surge of volunteers across Berkshire across the past 12 months, something which has been put down to the ‘Olympic effect’.
More than 600 people have signed up to the Sport Makers programme in the county since the 2012 Games.
It is estimated they have given up a total of four months of their time in the last year to help out at clubs, schools and sporting events.