Clause 6
Education and Inspections Bill
12:45 pm
David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)
I am pleased to speak to the amendments, particularly to amendments Nos. 183 to 185, which are probing amendments designed to elicit the Minister’s response to clause 6 on local authority functions respecting recreation. I hope that the debate will be slightly less controversial than the debate on probing amendment No. 347.
I welcome the provisions in clause 6 that will strengthen and clarify such functions and update the provisions of the Education Act 1996. Local authorities’ role in providing recreational services for young people is more important now than ever, especially in the context of antisocial behaviour, a growing concern that all Committee members have experienced. It is indisputably one of the most striking social phenomena in the United Kingdom that for the past two to three years or perhaps longer, as the level of serious crime has fallen, the level of unpleasant, unacceptable antisocial behaviour—particularly but not only among young people—has increased. It could be argued that there is a link between the long-term decline in funding for youth services, such as the provision of community recreation facilities, and the declining capacity of some young people to occupy themselves creatively and constructively without resorting to drugs, alcohol, violence or personal abuse. That is the context in which clause 6 is particularly welcome.
My reservation about clause 6 is that it does not draw a sufficient link between local authorities’ responsibility to provide recreational services for young people and curriculum activities in schools. We need to forge a stronger link between what individual schools wish to provide for their young people as part of the national curriculum and wider extra-curricular activities and what services and facilities exist outside the school and need to be provided by local authorities. We have not yet forged that link.
I shall make four brief points. With luck, I shall make them before we break for lunch, to provide a convenient point from which to continue the debate this afternoon.
London’s success in securing the 2012 Olympic games gives the UK a unique, once-in-a-lifetime—arguably a once-in-a-century—opportunity to encourage vastly greater numbers of young people to take an interest in sport. The Government recognise that and have already brought significant levels of new investment into sport. I want to reinforce the absolute importance of using the Olympic bid as the hook to transform attitudes to sport and physical activity of a whole generation of young people.
The current requirement in our schools is a minimum of two hours a week of sport and physical education. I am not sure that that is enough. We need to build on it, and strengthening local authorities’ responsibilities will be a small encouragement.