Physical Education

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for securing a debate on this very important subject. I am aware that it is close to his heart and I am grateful to him for his efforts thus far, including, of course, as chair of the Association for Physical Education taskforce, to promote the importance of this curriculum subject. In addition, this is the first opportunity that I have had at the—metaphorical—Despatch Box to thank him for all his work as one of my predecessors as the Minister responsible for children and families.

I also thank all hon. Members for their constructive and passionate contributions to this important debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury mentioned, we run together most Tuesday mornings and we have therefore had the benefit of discussing at great length this and many other issues. He knows that I am a relatively new convert to running—in truth, I am a relatively new convert to exercise full stop. But both running and exercise have now become a passion. In truth, I was not keen on playing sport at school. I did not enjoy it. People did not encourage me to play sport in school. I was one of the children picked last, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned in his speech. I was not very good at sport, and the main reason was that I lacked confidence. However, PE, sport and physical activity have significant importance in keeping children healthy and for the positive impact that they can have on a child’s health and wellbeing. I mention my own personal experience because, importantly, sport builds confidence. Schools should be aware of the difference that high-quality PE can make to a school. That is why PE is right at the heart of the national curriculum. In fact, it is the only foundation subject that is compulsory across all four key stages of the national curriculum.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury shares my passion in this area and a desire for us to go further and faster. Why? Yes, because health, fitness and physical wellbeing and mental health and wellbeing are really important, but also because this is about confidence, as I said, about camaraderie and teamwork, as the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) pointed out, and about leadership skills. They all come with taking part in competitive sport.

Why now? As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) said, we have an obesity crisis. We know that there is a growing issue—pardon the pun—with childhood obesity. Obesity is now a bigger cause of cancer than smoking and although sport is not the only solution to obesity, it is a part of it. PE, sport and physical activity can and should play their part in tackling that. Equally important, of course, are diet and nutrition, but setting behaviour and habits around physical activity early in life and, importantly, as part of family life is vital. My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury talked about what we see our parents doing, and about doing things with our parents. That is vital, because children take that with them into adult life. These habits and behaviours stay with people, and then they are seen by their children, so they develop them too and they are seen as normal. High-quality PE at the earliest age at school is key to allowing children to learn and develop key skills that will—to come back to this point—give them the confidence to take part in physical activity and competitive sport. My hon. Friend mentioned this, too. I genuinely believe, and there is evidence to suggest, that it also enhances academic performance.

I could say, “Everything is rosy. This happens for all children and they get excellent PE teaching at primary school.” But the truth is that that is not the case. I know that from my own experience and from the experience of many young people I have spoken with. The teaching of PE is done very well in many schools up and down the country, but it is inconsistent and, particularly at primary level, there is an issue with teachers lacking the confidence to teach PE effectively. Too often, it is outsourced, as we know. As great as rugby and football coaching is in and of itself, that is not PE; it does not give children the confidence and life skills that will lead them to take part in competitive sport. I am determined to address that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury has called for PE to be made a core subject. He rightly pointed out that no curriculum review is under way, but I am very sympathetic to the case and the arguments that he makes and I will raise them at length with the schools Minister.

At the heart of the debate, notwithstanding the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury, is the challenge to ensure that PE as a subject is taken seriously by all schools and that it is done brilliantly and consistently across our country. That is vital so that all children have the chance to develop the fundamental physical literacy that they need to go on to live an active, healthy life and to experience different types of sport, so that they are enthused and have confidence. That is why I am clear on the importance of PE as a curriculum subject. As I say, it is the only foundation subject taught across all key stages, making it a requirement for children of all ages. I assure all hon. Members across the House that the Government place significant importance on the delivery of PE lessons.

Notwithstanding that, given the challenges facing schools, as alluded to by the spokesperson for the official Opposition, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), and with the recovery from covid under way, we remain wary of making technical changes to the curriculum now. That could place additional burdens on teacher workloads and training requirements by introducing changes, which is particularly relevant as schools start to recover from the pandemic.

That said, however, as referenced in the taskforce report of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury, PE and sport are also vital to recovery. We want to focus on what we can do to build on what is already in place to ensure that PE is taught really well in schools. I therefore confirm that we remain committed to our manifesto commitments to support the effective use of school sport facilities and to invest in primary school PE teaching and the promotion of physical literacy and competitive sports.

My hon. Friend rightly pointed out the £30 million a year for opening up school sports facilities in England, as well as our measures to promote and improve the quality of teaching of physical education in primary schools. We will build on that £10.1 million that has supported schools to reopen their sports facilities after the pandemic, increasing opportunities for children and young people across England to take part in sport.

What have we done to improve PE so far? To help primary schools make improvements to the quality of PE and the support that they offer, we introduced the primary PE and sport premium in 2013, during the tenure of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury. The funding for the premium since its introduction is £1.6 billion, with the funding having doubled to £320 million a year since 2017. We are considering arrangements for the primary PE and sport premium for the 2022-23 academic year, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North.

I desperately want to give that long-term certainty of funding. All I can say is that I am working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to enable us to do that as soon as possible. We are considering a series of approaches to bring together the evidence of what constitutes really good PE, how that can be delivered practically and how to support schools to identify and take the steps necessary to make their provision as good as it can be.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury referred to the school sport and activity action plan. We remain committed to the ambitions that we set out in the plan and we will publish an update to it later this year, to align with our publication of the new sports strategy. That action plan update will not only cover ground lost during the covid-19 restrictions but boost momentum to deliver an action plan for all pupils, regardless of their background.

Notwithstanding what I have said, which I appreciate is lukewarm and complex, I assure my hon. Friend that I am ambitious about what we can do in this space and about going further on PE, school sport and physical activity in schools. I am ambitious about expanding the holiday activities and food programme, to which we have committed £200 million per year for a further three years as part of the spending review. Some 600,000 children up and down our country have taken part in those activities over the past year.

I am exploring whether we could be a daily mile nation, and I warn hon. Members that that will be not just for schools, but for everyone. I think we can do that, and I am pushing in the right direction. I am exploring a summer activity challenge—similar to the summer reading challenge—so that we get kids moving and taking part in sports and activities over the summer holidays.

The ambition is there and the work is ongoing. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury and Members throughout the Chamber are assured that we are determined to achieve the same thing, which is every school teaching PE well and every pupil benefiting from that, wherever they are, up and down our country. We will work with Ofsted, schools, sporting bodies and PE teachers on the further steps that we will take to achieve exactly that.