Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Football Association
Introduction
The Football Association is the national governing body responsible for football in England. The FA’s remit covers grassroots football, regulation of the professional game (alongside the leagues in which clubs compete) and running the 24 national teams (which include, men’s, women’s, youth and disability teams).
Football is called England’s national game with good reason. Men’s football is the most played sport in the country, women’s football the third most played and disability football the seventh. In fact ten times as many people in England play football week in week out than the second most popular sport, cricket. In total over two million people play football every week in 110,000 teams and over 29,000 clubs. This network is supported by 33,500 grass pitches, 1500 sand/water based artificial pitches and nearly 500 next-generation 3G artificial pitches. All of this is serviced by some 400,000 volunteers who strive week-in, week-out to ensure the grassroots game thrives.
The footballing network is therefore a very large one. Children love to play football and, while football is important to schools, schools are vital to football—not only in participants but facilities. More than 80% of football is played on publically owned and managed facilities, 52% of which being in education facilities (and a further 31% in local authority facilities).
The FA invests heavily in these structures to provide a grassroots game for all. The FA is a not for profit organisation and any surplus made is put back into the game and, for the last four years, we have invested £100 million per year back into the game. Approximately half of this investment goes to our County Football Associations structures around England and to grassroots football.
The FA’s Work in Schools
The FA’s flagship programme for schools is The FA Tesco Skills Programme. This is funded by The FA, Tesco and Sport England. It delivers six week coaching courses into schools for five–11 year olds. It is delivered by FA qualified and employed coaching staff, some of whom have come out of the elite end of both the men’s and women’s game. The key principles of the programme are to not only provide children with a “quality school sport and coaching experience” but also to embed the coaching techniques and session plans with the existing teachers.
Over four million FA Tesco Skills coaching places have been taken up by school children since 2007. We have supported over 7,000 primary schools and an estimated 21,000 teachers with the overall gender split of children being 57.5% boys and 42.5% girls. 3% of places are taken up by disabled children and 16.2% of places are taken up by ethnic minority children. Our aim is to have reached 4.7 million children by 2014.
The programme works within primary schools providing specialist football coaching, lessons and support to teachers. Our FA youth qualified coaches’ work with over 1,700 schools each year. They provide specialist, age appropriate lessons which are in line with the National Curriculum and support schools and teachers with their PE provision. The programme also provides after-school football sessions, holiday coaching sessions and supports local FA Charter Standard Clubs.
The Association for Physical Education (afPE) has just accredited our Skills Programme which demonstrates their confidence in the quality of the content, delivery of the programme, support for teacher’s professional development and teacher resources. The FA believes that independent quality assurance will be an attraction and reassurance to head teachers seeking to invest in football programmes for their school.
1. The impact and effectiveness of current Government policy and expenditure on increasing sports in schools
Given that the Government has recently announced a new school sport policy, The FA’s response will focus on this new strategy.
Focus on the Primary Sector—The FA supports the Government’s focus on making changes to the resourcing and provision of sport in the primary sector. We believe that this is the right area of focus and that specifically the physical literacy of school children at an early age needs to be improved. Central to meeting this challenge is addressing the deficiency in sport and physical education experience amongst teaching staff in the primary sector and the access to high quality PE provision for boys and girls under the age of 11.
Empowering and resourcing head-teachers—The FA understands that a fundamental principle of education policy is the independence and autonomy of schools to decide their priorities and how to resource.
Need for assessment and measurement—However, we also strongly believe in the principle “that whatever gets measured gets done”. That is why we welcome the Government’s further announcement that there will be a formal Ofsted measurement of sporting provision by Primary Schools and that schools will be required to publicly report on how they invest their school sport funding.
Quality accredited products and services—Empowering head-teachers with resources to deliver school sport, and formally assessing their delivery, requires a “supply” of quality provision to meet this “demand”. The FA’s Tesco Skills Programme for five–11 year old boys and girls is, we believe, an example of how sport can develop high quality coaching, PE engagement, teacher training, resources and development to meet this demand.
Supporting teacher training—Increasing the number of primary teachers with a sporting interest and training and up-skilling those to deliver quality PE is essential. The FA, aligned to its Skills Programme, has already produced afPE accredited teacher resource materials which are available to all current and aspiring teachers.
Overall The FA believes that focusing on primary schools will not only increase participation at primary schools, but also allow those transitioning to secondary schools to take their skills and enjoy their school sport in their new environment too. It is clearly too early to review the effectiveness of this policy, but The FA hopes the policy will be supported and allowed to bed in and grow.
2. The scope, appropriateness and likelihood of success of the Government’s plans for a school sports legacy from London 2012
The Government’s strategy for primary school sport is very welcome and adds another layer to previous policy which missed this age group. Each national governing body produces a Whole Sport Plan agreed with Sport England. The 2013–17 version extends into school sport to target secondary school children and specifically links between sports clubs and schools. This final part of the jigsaw allows children to follow a pathway from the first school years and for the rest of their lives.
The completion of this pathway is vital to the future success of a school sports strategy to prevent drop-out from physical activity throughout life. Giving children basic physical literacy skills when they are young and bridging the gaps in provision as they change school and life environments is incredibly important.
The FA is committed to providing opportunities for young people aged 14–25 to play or volunteer in football, both within school and beyond the school gates. We already invest significantly in the delivery of mini-soccer and youth football to the five–11 age group and want to convert more of these players into lifelong participants. We will do this through a tailored offer of high quality programmes and intervention aimed at the 14–25 age group. Examples of such programmes are below:
Club Links Transition Programme
“Join Our Club,” our club links player transition programme to Charter Standard clubs, has contributed to the growth and retention of over 2,000 Charter Standard Teams. A range of recreational programmes have also been developed as part of the process to cater for those young people not ready to make the transition to affiliated football, with over 5,000 boys and girls now playing regularly in recreational programmes. On average over 22,000 participants take part in a range of activities through the programme each year, with many of these converted to regular, once a week football participants.
Football Futures (Leadership and Volunteering Programme)
The FA Football Futures Leadership and Volunteering programme has supported over 6,000 new young volunteers working in Charter Standard Clubs or educational programmes through affiliated and recreational football programmes. During the first two quarters of 2011–12 season over 30,000 voluntary hours were logged.
College and Community Football Coordinators
College and Community Football Coordinators (CCFC) work directly with the 16–19 year olds in Further Education and Sixth Form colleges. As part of the CCFC programme TEAM 19 was successfully launched in partnership with British Colleges Sport in December 2011, engaging over 60 colleges in the programme and resulting in 4,000 new players participating a minimum of once a week. To make the programme sustainable, Student Management Teams have been developed, supervised by college staff in over 50% of the TEAM 19 leagues. Just Play centres have also been a key intervention in Further Education with 1,000 new participants attending Centres during 2011–12.
Just Play on Further Education and Higher Education sites
Through The FA’s partnership with British University and College Sport over 1,000 new participants have taken part in Just Play festivals based on university sites. Between 35–50% of participants, many of whom were international students, did not currently take part in football previously and are now regular participants in the centres. Some of the Just Play centres are linked to local football clubs in the community, which enables effective transition pathways to affiliated football. Just Play has also supported the development of new teams and the retention of existing intra-mural teams in Higher Education with over 2,600 11-a-side and small sided teams playing regular football. In total there are 51 “kickabouts” established in FE and HE centres.
3. The impact so far of London 2012 on the take-up of competitive sports in schools
The FA does not have data to show the impact of the Olympics in competitive sport in school, but it certainly appears that the Olympics proved a real catalyst for women’s football. The London 2012 Olympics broke women’s football records with total crowds of 660,986 watching 26 games around the country (an average of 24,944 per match).
The final saw 80,203 watch USA beat Japan in the final—the second biggest attendance ever for a women’s game internationally while 70,584 watched Great Britain beat Brazil at Wembley shattering all previous records.
Media coverage also took a major leap forward with coverage on the front and back of many nationals. Over 100 national written press articles were recorded and the tone was uniformly positive about the game and especially the wonderful way in which the athletes conducted themselves.
TV viewing figures also provide proof that the Olympic platform introduced women’s football to a whole new audience. The peak audience was 3.9 million watching the victory over Brazil with an average of 2.3 million.
Following this success, the BBC will now show live coverage of all England Women’s Euro 2013 matches this summer, both semi-finals and the final played out across BBC Two and BBC Three. In addition, all other peak time matches will be broadcast on BBC Three. The Women’s FA Cup final on May 26 in Doncaster will also be live on the BBC.
Most importantly, participation is up, with women’s football going from the fourth to third most popular sport in the country (behind men’s football and cricket).
4. What further measures should be taken to ensure a sustainable and effective legacy in school sports following London 2012
With the government’s new direction on school sport in primary schools and new Whole Sport Plan provision designed to engage with secondary schools and prevent post school drop off now in place, it is important that these elements are given time to work and succeed. The FA would very much welcome a period of stability now to ensure that the programmes outlined in this paper that are proving successful in the field can be developed an expanded. We would therefore welcome cross-party support in stabilising the school sport offer and the Whole Sport Plan requirements.
It is imperative that schools and head-teachers are provided support in implementing the new school sport strategy. Guidance on the programmes available to them in which they can invest their money is therefore the next important step. We know that Government is creating this guidance at the moment and we are happy to continue to support them in doing so. We also believe that Ofsted assessment for school sport provision markedly increases the emphasis on providing quality sport provision and would hope this evaluation becomes permanent. School club links and programmes designed to engage schools with communities are also important and with over 50% of football pitches inside school facilities, ensuring community access to school facilities is vital.
April 2013