CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Have you noticed how Secretaries of State in my department tend to get pigeon holed? It’s a symptom of the rich range of responsibilities of the Department and a tendency in some of our sectors to have the curious expectation that their Cabinet Minister must be a culture vulture, sports anorak and media nerd in one.

I guess if I’m seen as anything I’m the broadcasting Secretary. Partly because that’s my background, (though why someone who was only ever a humble hack should be assumed to be an expert on broadcasting policy is beyond me), and because there’s been a lot in the news recently about the BBC and broadcasting.

Some people have even suggested I’m not interested in sport.

Well if that’s because I’m not a season ticket holder at a Premier League club, lack encyclopaedic knowledge of every sporting event in history and am not a permanent fixture in various Royal Boxes to watch championships won and trophies paraded – then I happily plead guilty.

However, if it’s because they don’t think I understand or feel passionate about sport, its power to improve and transform people’s lives and the central role it plays in our nation’s life – they are sorely mistaken.

I was brought up in rural Norfolk in the days when children ran free. We cycled everywhere, including to school. When it wasn’t raining we were out playing football, tennis, rounders, climbing from trees – anything improvised or organised that was fun or active.

I suppose I had a typical school sports experience too. If, as a boy, you weren’t so keen on the contact team sports there was also a pigeon-holing tendency by some of the teachers. But I was lucky to be good enough at racquet sports to be noticed and encouraged to pursue those, playing that gave me great pleasure then and still does when I get the chance.

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My childhood made me more interested in playing sport than watching it or talking about it in the pub. My upbringing and education gave me that and I think that’s a good thing. It’s also what you are instilling in today’s children, day-in, day-out with passion, dedication and growing success.

So let me start by saying a warm “thank you” to everyone here, to the Youth Sport Trust and Sue Campbell and Steve Grainger in particular for the great leadership you are providing. And to Sport England and Richard Lewis and Jenny Price too.

And to everyone else for your dedication and the outstanding work that you have put in over the past year.

I may have left you with the impression just now that I am not interested in hot tickets. Well I have to confess that I did creep into the Royal Box at Wimbledon this year – a nice change from the nights I used to spend sleeping on the pavements of SW1 to see my heroes and heroines. I even made it to the Test at Lords and a couple of football matches at St James’ Park – Exeter of course, not Newcastle. That’s all been very nice. One of the privileges of this job.

But the experiences that have really fired me up have been to see work and achievements that don’t feature in the sports pages or in the musings of the armchair sports commentators – but that are working miracles with people, particularly young people every day in every community in Britain.

An initiative in a really tough estate in West London using futsal – which has literally ended a long running gang war and got youngsters, including muslim girls, involved in competitive sport – people who would never have dreamt of it before.

The school in Liverpool that had got Everton and Liverpool together (quite a feat in itself) as part of the Premier League 4 Sports scheme offering table tennis, badminton, judo and volley ball engaging and enthusing pupils who maybe like me in my day weren’t too hot on the traditional sports but were loving this. Or national school sports week whose second year I helped launch with Sue in East London drawing youngsters from all over some of the most deprived communities in the capital, in the shadow of the Olympic site – to run, jump, kick, throw and have a generally fantastic and competitive time.

Some of the myths around the state of sport in our schools drive me mad. They must drive you madder.

The Daily Mail is at it again today – “Schools drop rugby for yoga and circus skills”

It’s time to take the myths head on.

Myth number 1. School sport is in decline. Those who claim this have clearly not spent much time in schools of late. School sport used to be in decline, in fact it was dying. Ten years ago, it’s estimated, only one pupil in four aged 16 or under received two hours a week of good quality sport or physical education. Today – nine out of ten pupils do. That’s thanks to you.

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Myth number 2. We’ve driven competitiveness out of school sport for fear of accidents or upsetting children who don’t win prizes. What rubbish!
Seven out of ten children now take part in school competitions and there’s been a strong and steady increase in recent years. Some may have got the impression recently that schools don’t have sports days any more. In fact, official surveys couldn’t find a single primary school that didn’t hold one and found that 98 percent of secondary schools did.

Again, thanks to you.

We’re so confident in what you are delivering in schools that the Government is adding competitive sport to the ‘Pupil Guarantee’ – so it will be a legal requirement – enshrining it in the national curriculum, along with the right of every child, no matter what their background or ability, to five hours of PE and sport each week.

Myth number 3. You’ve sold all the playing fields. This one really gets me going. It used to happen in the bad old days – schools forced to sell valuable playing fields because they were starved of cash. But since October 1998 no sports pitches needed by schools and their communities have been sold off, not one.

There’s a trickle of applications by schools or education authorities to dispose of land – there’s been one this year – but these are only allowed to happen where a school is closing or moving or the money from the sale is being used to make sports facilities better.

These last few years have seen unprecedented levels of Government investment in school sport.

In 1997 there was no national strategy for sport in schools. No support or infrastructure that reached across the whole nation. No investment to speak of.

This Government’s invested more than £5.5 billion in sport at all levels – schools, community, our elite performers – investment that’s coming good.

The majority of children used to get short changed when it came to school sport. Marched in and out of the changing rooms as quickly as possible. Now they are getting time to learn, play and improve at new games, quality coaching, and the competitive challenges that sport is all about.

As a Government that’s sometimes criticised for missing its targets I’m thrilled that we can now adopt even more ambitious ones because you have broken through the old ones early. So, from a two hour minimum to a three hour benchmark – half of all pupils are already doing three hours as the latest survey showed. And we’d like you to raise that to 8 out of 10 doing three hours this academic year and next.

And we are supporting you with over £780 million for the three years up to 2011 – on top of the £1.5 billion invested since 2003. I do not believe the global credit crunch should be used as an excuse to pull the rug from under school sport and to lose all the fantastic gains you have made in the last few years.

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Together we can realise our historic ambition that every child should have the chance to do five hours of high quality sport and PE in and out of school every week. That really would be an Olympic legacy to be proud of and you’ve told me today that 92 percent of you already have plans in place to deliver it.

The challenge will be to make sure that within those hours you are offering the variety and quality that will appeal to every young person. And we will be doing everything we can to support you in that, starting with this guide.

That five hour offer is a central part of our Olympics legacy.

And we also set ourselves the equally ambitious goal to get a million more adults doing sport regularly – and a million more doing more exercise.
Together these goals will be a more valuable and permanent legacy than any number of gold medals. So I was delighted when our most successful Olympian ever, Steve Redgrave, agreed to take on the role of Legacy Champion. He will do a brilliant job to make things happen – ably assisted by our team of School Sports Ambassadors:

Darren Campbell and Jason Gardener.
Gail Emms.
Joe Glanfield.
Sascha Kindred,
and Denise Lewis.

This is a starry list – and it’s great seeing the enthusiasm and dedication of some of our top sporting names to put something back into the system that helped make them.

The problem of engaging children who’re not playing sport at the moment – is not usually a problem of sport itself. It’s usually that they have not found the right sport for them, or the right opportunity, or had the right encouragement and support.

Some of the schemes I’ve mentioned, many I haven’t, and the work you do will help us break through those barriers. Imagination, innovation, sharing best practice will all be key. Thinking laterally too.

All possible because of the Olympics, and all part of the legacy.

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I was talking with Cycling England the other day about new ways of getting people to ride bikes. As you may know I do, and no, I am not followed by a ministerial car carrying my briefcase. Cycle training having fallen into abeyance years ago is now being offered in many schools. It attracts extra funding – always useful when budgets are tight. So why not build in cycle training or ‘bikeability’ as it’s now called as part of your five hour offer?

Our free swimming scheme – pilloried when we launched it has been a fantastic success with 4.4 million swims by youngsters and the over 60s in just the first three months. And I’m delighted that seven more councils have just signed up to offer free swimming to youngsters aged 16 and under.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could create a similar buzz for cycling as we have for swimming by offering every child the opportunity to learn to ride a bike safely – giving them a skill and independence that will last their life time – as happier, fitter, greener adults.

We have to work smarter particularly if we’re to get more women and girls, youngsters from poorer and disadvantaged backgrounds and people with disabilities playing sport.

Peer chat and word-of-mouth have to work best and certainly better than exhortation from a Government Minister.

And Sport England’s Facebook Sport Hub is going to put the national governing bodies in touch with 20 million potential new recruits.

And today announcing that we will be launching a 10-week pilot here in the West Midlands starting in January for a national school sports results website. This is the first step on a journey that will enable more than nine million young people in schools to showcase and compare their own and their teams’ performances and results, to post clips, file match reports and podcast commentaries and interviews.

I want to see the website become the hub of a vibrant culture of competitive school sport – and a valuable tool to help crack the serious challenges that remain.

Just over half of all pupils up to Year 11 are doing three hours of sport. But only one in five in Years 12 and 13.

The way sport in school has been transformed is something to be hugely proud of – for everyone who has played a part in that, in the schools and in the partnerships that support them.

But just when we need young people to be hooked for life on sport – as they’re getting more freedom to choose what to do with their time – we’re still seeing them swim off in search of more tempting bait.

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Closing this gap has to be our big focus for the next few years. Our Olympic years. Our Decade of Sport. Stitching together – permanently – the bonds between school sport, elite sport and community sport.

We have to use our investment in the Olympics and the strength of the school/community/elite partnership to inspire young people and give them somewhere to go and play. To give them irresistible choices and unmissable opportunities.

We talk a lot about healthy competition in sport. I’d like to see sports competing with each other to attract young people. Sport has got to be ready to go out and grab people – not sit back and wait for people to come along.

The appeal of high quality coaching is one way to do that, and I know that great strides are being made in expanding and professionalising the coaching workforce – to the tune of over 3,700 newly qualified professional coaches in the last year alone, with 10,000 trained volunteer coaches to be recruited by 2011.

With what I’ve already said about young people’s words and actions, our Young Leaders and Young Ambassadors are priceless too – as anyone who saw Debbie, one of the Young Ambassadors, open this conference will no doubt agree.

But that still leaves room, in my view, for us to ask for even greater effort from our national governing bodies to get even more children involved in school sport and in building the links between their clubs and local schools.

Clubs need to be more welcoming. (I still remember as a teenage tennis player having to wait till the seniors had finished before being allowed on court.)

Clubs have to link up much more closely with local schools, so there’s effectively no distinction between doing sport in school and doing sport when you’ve left school.

I’m picturing a school where the clubs play an integral part. Where the schools are open to the community, mornings, evenings and weekends. Where families can come along together and choose from a range of top quality activities. Where there are comfortable and safe places to wait, to meet up, to have a drink and a chat. Where’s there’s good coaching and well-organised competitive games.

I don’t think that’s unrealistic – in fact there are schools where this is already starting to happen.

But I do think it is the key to bridging the gap between schools and clubs, the gap that too many young people are currently falling through.

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If we bridge that gap we’ll start to see as many teenagers, young and older adults from poorer families playing for sports clubs as there are from better off backgrounds.

We’ll start to see as many black and Asian players breaking through in tennis and golf and rugby as are there are in football and basketball. We’ll see more disabled athletes becoming household names for their sporting achievements.

As a health minister I was critically aware of the importance of this agenda for our nation’s long term health and well being. You have all seen the terrifying predictions on obesity and diabetes if we don’t get this right.

As environment minister before that I knew how much less carbon is emitted from a BMX than a BMW.

And now in this job when I talk to colleagues across government, it is clear how central sport is to almost every department – cutting crime, improving educational performance and career prospects, improving the feel of and quality of life in every community.

I want to finish with a challenge to us all. It’s not to do something new, or to start again from scratch.

Sue Campbell spoke about school sport being a quiet revolution. That’s part of the problem. It’s a quiet revolution and because it’s quiet not enough people know about it and realise how valuable it is. I want us to make it a loud revolution. We’ll try to do our bit in Government but we need you in your communities, with parents, with your local NHS, in your local newspapers and radio stations claiming and getting credit for what you are doing. Because you’ve earned it.

Thank you.