Memorandum submitted by the Youth Sport
Trust
INTRODUCTION
Please accept this paper as representing the
views of the Youth Sport Trust in respect of the areas of the
EU White Paper on Sport which we believe our work has a relationship
to, or can help inform.
The Youth Sport Trust are delighted to be playing
a lead role in the implementation of the National PE School Sport
and Club Links strategy which is making a real difference to the
provision of PE and school sport across the country. Since our
inception in 1995, we have worked extensively to promote the importance
of PE and school sport and to strive to make this a central part
of a young person's life.
For ease, the following sections have been ordered
using the sections of the Action Plan that accompanies the White
Paper.
A. THE SOCIETAL
ROLE OF
SPORT
From a societal perspective, evidence shows
that sport has a role to play in the development of young people
from an early age in a wide variety of ways, not only through
academic achievement and therefore their future employability,
but also instilling in them the values of fairness, team work,
communication skills and problem solving skills. Sport can be
used as a way of improving concentration levels (many children
themselves report that they feel better able to concentrate in
class after a period of PE/sport[7]),
to improve behaviour (again cited by young people themselves),
attendance and general attitude.
The Sky Living for Sport programme (school-based
intervention aimed at young people aged 11-16 who are having difficulties
with, or are disengaged from, school life) has been robustly evaluated[8]
and continues to show real improvement in these areas, reported
by both teachers and pupils alike. It shows:
— improved attitude toward non-project
staff; reported by 51% of teaching staff, with a further 21% saying
this was true to some extent;
— improved attitude toward other young
people; reported by 60% of teaching staff, with a further 23%
saying this was true to some extent;
— improved attitude towards learning;
reported by 53% of teaching staff, with a further 31% saying this
was true to some extent;
— increased self-confidence; reported
by 65% of teaching staff, with a further 17% saying this was true
to some extent;
— improved social skills; reported
by 62% of teaching staff, with a further 25% saying this was true
to some extent;
— improved behaviour of the young person;
reported by 66% of teaching staff, with a further 16% saying to
some extent; and
— improved behaviour around the school,
reported by 38% of teaching staff, with a further 30% saying to
some extent.
It is recognised within UK government already
(through policy such as the recent Childrens' Plan) that the importance
of sport and physical activity to a young person is key to affording
them opportunities to grow and develop as well-rounded individuals
and to become productive members of society and the economy.
A1 Public Health Through Physical Activity
In their leisure time, young people today are
faced with the choice of a wide range of activities and many currently
choose to participate in sport. Their leisure time is varied but
on average over two hours per day is spent watching television,
DVDs or videos. Around four in five have access to a home computer
and over half are able to access the Internet at home, with older
children now seeing the Internet as more important than the television.
So there are more choices today and more of these choices can
be sedentary in nature, giving rise to the need to ensure they
participate in the recommended amount of physical activity. The
World Health Organisation currently suggests (advice which is
also advocated by the British Heart Foundation) that young people
should participate in at least one hour of moderate activity every
day and that in doing so, they can reduce the risk of health related
problems in later life such as chronic disease.
PE at school has a role to play in enabling
these young people to achieve the recommended levels of activity
and in helping them to live a healthy life. Indeed, the Every
Child Matters: Change for Children strategy came into play in
2004 and sport can undoubtedly have an impact in enabling schools
to deliver the outcome of this strategy. A soon to be published
resource from the Youth Sport Trust illustrates, sometimes quite
profoundly, how the sport specialism is having a significant impact
on the outcomes of Every Child Matters and is exemplified by a
number of individual case studies. It shows there are varying
strategies that schools use to impact on the outcomes both as
a universal service and also, when necessary, to target and impact
on the specific needs of individual young people.
Physical activity rates are indeed improving
in England, with much progress being made and we score well by
international standards. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) data[9]
shows that in England on average 11, 13 and 15-year-olds reported
spending more time being physically active per week[10]
(4.2 days) than in 19 other OECD countries (3.9 days).
More specifically, improvements in school sport
have been significant. Recent evidence[11]
shows that the percentage of 5-16 year olds participating in at
least two hours high quality PE and school sport each week has
increased from just over 60% in 2003-04 to over 85% in 2006-07.
There is of course scope to increase activity levels even further
and the recent announcement of the Government's commitment to
ensuring every child has access to up to five hours of sport in
a week can make this a reality.
Beyond the school, FE and HE offers a significant
opportunity to impact on the health and wellbeing of even more
individuals and to enable the continuum of participation from
childhood into adulthood. The introduction of FE Sport Co-ordinators
will enable this to happen and to extend the offer to participate
to those aged 16 to 19. Evidence shows that there is a real risk
of dropping out of sport and physical activity in general at particular
points in an individual's life. Recent data suggests[12]
that a clear and significant drop off in participation is seen
after the age of 16, most notably the time when these individuals
are putting into practice their post-16 choices. From a high of
86% of young people involved in PE/sport while at school, this
drops to only one third of young people (33%) aged 16-24 who go
on to participate regularly.[13]
There is always the chance that young people move away from home
to go to a new college or university, with the effect that they
have to start all over again in making new links to clubs and
to enable them to continue playing the sport they have always
loved. The introduction of FE Sport Co-ordinators will play a
huge role in easing that transition and ensuring that opportunities
to participate are more readily available and easier to find.
Enhancing public health through physical activity
is a lifelong process and so there must be some emphasis placed
on ensuring that sport and physical activity become a way of life
that is continued through these life stages. As well as recommendations
on the amount of physical activity young people should be engaging
in, there also exists recommendations for adults, yet it is clear
that enablers need to be put in place for this to take effect.
A3 Education and Training
The benefit of sport is well recognised and
accepted by various government departments, academics and increasingly
through educational policy with the introduction in recent years
of the specialist schools programme and the inclusion of sport
within that as a distinct specialism. Indeed the government's
national strategy for sport[14]
firmly places sports colleges (schools with a specialism in sport)
and School Sport Partnership at the heart of the strategy's delivery.
A strong infrastructure needs to be in place
for the success of sport in education to be realised. The model
of School Sport Partnerships in England, and the introduction
of FE sport co-ordinators, ensures now and in the future that
the key people are in place in order to make the relationships
and connections to enable young people to have the opportunity
to participate in PE and sport from childhood, with the ultimate
goal of sustainable participation. The authors welcome and already
embrace opportunities to work with our partners in education.
The specialism of sport is used throughout the
whole school and the impacts of this are not just confined to
the PE department, but are felt right throughout the school. Impacts
such as improvement in behaviour, increased concentration and
attention, improved attendance and increased enjoyment of learning
are all reported by Sports Colleges. Both pupils and teachers
alike report seeing improvements in school standards from academic
achievement, through behaviour and concentration to enjoyment
of learning.
From an academic attainment perspective, sports
colleges have seen year on year increases in the key performance
measure of achieving five good passes at GCSE (i.e. at grades
A*-C) over the last three years and notably for Sports Colleges,
achievement at GCSE 5+A*-C (i.e. a good GCSE pass) increases with
each year of designation.
PE and sport can play a role in the shaping
achievement across the whole school curriculum. A recent Youth
Sport Trust publication, Raising your Game, exemplified
how the sport specialism is being used across the school to drive
up standards, in particular in English, maths and science. Schools
have used the specialism to find innovative ways of teaching what
might otherwise be considered by young people to be uninteresting
material, often bringing learning to life using new teaching approaches,
using sporting contexts for learning and adopting a cross-fertilisation
of ideas and approaches across departments.
"Specialist status as a sports college has
been a key feature of effective curriculum
development."—School Ofsted report, 2007.
"I've improved in maths and English because
after I work out & do sport my brain is more switched on and
I feel I can concentrate more."
— Pupil[15]
The impact that PE and sport can have on a young
person's learning and across the school is evident. Recent research
from the Youth Sport Trust highlighted the sometimes profound
effect that the sport specialism can have on young people, particularly
those with challenges or difficulties personal circumstances and
how it helps them to overcome these barriers and to become a full
and productive member of society.[16]
"Sport takes you to a better living, it's not
just sport there's more to it."
— Pupil[17]
A4 Volunteering in Sport
A key element of the Youth Sport Trust leadership
and volunteering work is the creation of a sporting pathway which
helps young people to develop their leadership skills, helps them
to use their leadership and volunteering skills and helps them
to become leaders and volunteers for life.
We are working to create this pathway through
the school (in PE and school sport and the whole school), in the
community sport setting and into the community setting through
a range of national programmes and innovations projects such as
Step into Sport, our Young Ambassadors programme, young officials
programme and corporate volunteers.
The evidence from these programmes and particularly
from the longer-standing Step into Sport programme suggests that
involvement in volunteering opportunities can lead to the benefits
of:
— increased self-confidence;
— improved communication skills;
— organisational skills; and
— pedagogy and coaching skills.
Indeed some young volunteers also reported that
doing their community volunteering hours had helped them to better
understand other subjects at school and more than one-quarter
reported their engagement with the programme had made them want
to go to university.
The research indicated that regular and sustainable
volunteering had led to the young people assuming greater responsibilities
for overall sports provision with specific client groups of younger
children. The gradual handing-over of responsibility from PE teachers
to young volunteers in school-based settings echoes findings from
earlier research with sports clubs with respect to the coaching
and sports leadership activities of on-site community volunteers.
There is evidence to suggest that volunteering by young people
can lead to sustained volunteering later in life and most certainly
is reported as an intention. Difficulties of course in following
this through to reality vary from person to person but for young
people specifically in balancing their future volunteering with
ongoing work, study and family commitments.
Previous survey research with young volunteers
has indicated complex and overlapping motivations for participation
in volunteering, including instrumental career-led approaches
and more altruistic community-driven motivations. Sometimes however,
volunteering can act as a career-taster for young volunteers and
help define further interest in educational and sports-related
employment.
A5 Social Inclusion in and Through Sport
In ensuring inclusive access to sport, all young
people should be entitled to get a positive, meaningful experience
and special schools are locked into the network of School Sport
Partnerships to provide the vehicle by which young people of all
backgrounds are enabled to come together, learn from each other
and develop their understanding and knowledge of each other and
of different perspectives, backgrounds and abilities.
Each special school in England is part of one
of these School Sport Partnership and each has a link teacher
who is the main conduit with that partnership and who's role it
is to specifically improve PE and sport in their school. Being
a part of a School Sport Partnership affords them access to opportunities
outside their school and across their partnership and to share
ideas and inspiration.
TOP Sportsability, one of the Youth Sport Trust
TOP Programmes, was introduced in 1998 to widen access to physical
education, school sport and community sport for young disabled
people through high quality training for staff and has since been
developed for out-of-hours learning and community settings. Research
conducted by the Institute for Youth Sport[18]
demonstrated the following impacts:
— over a third (35%) of schools had
adjusted their PE and sport delivery to become more inclusive
as a result of the programme;
— schools have reported increased attendance
of SEN pupils in PE and school sport opportunities and improved
attitudes to learning and behaviour; and
— some 45% of schools indicated that
TOP Sportsability has contributed to pupil's progress in terms
of sport skills.
"TOP Sportsability has provided
a focus for our work and a catalyst for wider developments such
as better links with support services"— Teacher interview.
Sport can provide a platform from which to encourage
inclusivity and foster understanding amongst people of all backgrounds
and the UK School Games has provided just this platform with the
programme of sports including disability events in athletics and
swimming.
So too does it offer the opportunity of participation
for everyone of all abilities regardless of disability, gender
or race. The introduction of multi-skill clubs gives everyone
the opportunity to develop in a positive environment in which
confidence grows to try one or two different sports. The staging
of a multi-skill club can be flexible and dependent upon local
need, eg a club could be situated on a school site as part of
their out of school hours provision or at a local secondary school
hub site or based in a local authority leisure centre, so ensuring
maximum accessibility.
Increasingly schools are introducing more non-traditional
sports as a way of offering a wide range of options to young people
so enabling them to make their own personal choice of what sports
they want to try. Sports like Boccia and wheelchair basketball
are increasingly on offer across many schools and School Sport
Partnerships.
Recent research by the Loughborough Partnership
into the impact of School Sports Partnerships on participation[19]
showed clearly that while overall levels of participation in PE/sport
had increased there was substantial variation between the participation
of boys, girls, pupils with a disability and pupils from ethnic
minorities. Specialist sports colleges in particular are tackling
this by adopting relevant approaches to increase participation
in sport amongst black, asian and ethnic minority pupils, a significant
proportion of whom have tailored their range of sports on offer
to take account of pupils preferences and that actually consulting
with the pupils to ask what they want has been considered a simple
yet effective solution to overcoming participation barriers.
A7 Sport in the Union's External Relations
Research has consistently indicated that girls
are less active than boys and physical activity declines through
adolescence at a faster rate for girls than for boys.[20]
Many girls report that they would like to be more physically active
and yet school sport partnerships across the UK continue to report
adolescent girls are disengaged from physical education, school
sport and physical activity in their leisure time.
In November 2006 Norwich Union joined forces
with the Youth Sport Trust and Dame Kelly Holmes to empower teenage
girls to enjoy more sporting activity on their own terms. The
girls who attended the first three roadshows were engaged in a
range of activities aimed at engaging them with physical activity
and were challenged to come up with ideas on what they would change
in their own schools in order to make sporting activity something
they would want to participate in.
The girls identified a wide range of factors
influencing their engagement with physical activity. Over 85%
of the girls rated the environment for their PE lessons, the range
of activities on offer, their PE kit and the lack of opportunities
to volunteer in the community as either average or poor. However
when asked "what one thing do you think would get more girls
active?" their responses almost exclusively focused on the
need for the provision of contemporary leisure activities such
as streetdance, boxercise and trampolining.
Such is the importance of ensuring the access
to opportunities is matched to the needs of individuals. Improving
access for girls in PE and sport (as outlined in the White Paper)
will enable them to not only participate but to build confidence,
improve their social skills and enjoy it.
In developing co-operation with partner countries
(outlined in partner countries) much can be learned from the existing
Dreams and Teams (D+T) programme. This is a British Council (BC)
programme that uses sport to develop young leaders, enhance their
citizenship skills and promote intercultural understanding. It
involves two main strands: the roll out of a leadership through
sport training programme for 14-19 year olds in schools overseas
and the forging of school links with specialist sport colleges
in the UK. The school link element of D+T is managed by Youth
Sport Trust.
Two of the aims of Dreams and Teams were that
relationships brokered by D+T broaden the international view of
young people and that the UK is recognised as a country of choice
for partnering positive social change. An evaluation[21]
of this programme showed that these objectives had been achieved
with:
— 94% of respondents to questionnaires
believing that sport was either very important or quite important
in broadening the international view of young people;
— teachers providing a mean rating
of the overall quality of educational activity from the initiative
as 4.0 (where 1=very poor and 5=very good), with the mean rating
for overseas teachers of 4.5; and
— a third of UK young leaders felt
their overall understanding of overseas culture had been broadened
a lot/very significantly with a further 28% believing it had been
improved.
The authors would like to see policy in this
area being of mutual benefit to all countries involved, including
our own, and particularly at the level of young people from all
backgrounds. Policy should also take account, where possible,
of existing programmes where success has been proven and build
upon those successes. Sport and young people provide a vehicle
for opening up international co-operation.
February 2008
7 YST/Know the Score 2008. Back
8
IYS/Sky Living for Sport Year 1-3 Combined Report; January 2007. Back
9
HSBC Health Behaviour in School-age Children Study (2001-02). Back
10
In the previous or typical week. Back
11
School Sport Survey 2007. Back
12
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2007); Taking Part
Survey. Back
13
This is defined as taking part on at least three days a week
in moderate intensity sport and active recreation for at least
30 minutes continuously in any one session. Back
14
PE, School Sport and Club Links Strategy. Back
15
YST/Everyone's a Winner 2008. Back
16
YST/Everyone's a Winner 2008. Back
17
YST/Everyone's a Winner 2008. Back
18
TOP Sportsability in mainstream schools-Interim report.
Institute of Youth Sport (2005). Back
19
Impact of School Sport Partnerships; Evaluation (Loughborough
Partnership). Back
20
GirlsActive; A Research Evaluation; T O'Donovan, Carnegie
Research Institute (March 2007). Back
21
British Council Dreams & Teams Monitoring & Evaluation:
November 2005. Back
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