BEXLEY: Pupils fight back as sports programme faces the axe

School pupils in the borough have launched their own petition and letter writing campaign and Bexley’s cabinet member for sport, Councillor Peter Catterall has written to Education Secretary Michael Gove expressing his concern.

As part of the coalition cutbacks, Mr Gove has announced the withdrawal of the £162m funding for the programme at the end of March.

All but £10m of the cash will go back into the general education budget.

The programme was set up by the previous Labour government to increase participation by children and young people in sport, and provide opportunities for extra-curricular sport, leadership activities and closer links between sports clubs and schools.

Bexley has two school sports partnerships based at Hurstmere School in Sidcup and Woodside School in Belvedere, both specialist sports colleges.

They employ two full-time development managers as well as 15 school sports co-ordinators and five community coaches who between them cover all the primary, secondary and special schools in the borough.

Through the partnerships, the number of borough pupils taking part in at least two hours a week of school sport, has increased from 65 per cent in 2005 to 93 per cent this year.

More than 15,000 take part in more than three hours a week and more than 10,000 children took part in inter-school competitions last year.

When the programme is axed in March, the community coaches will be released and the development managers and co-ordinators will either have to find jobs in their existing schools or be made redundant.

In Bexley, the programme has trained more than 300 midday supervisors to provide lunchtime activities, provided more than 3,000 hours of out-of-hours free sports coaching, provided new sporting and physical activities for children not interested in traditional sport and increased leadership and volunteering among school students from three per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent this year.