Concerns grow over securing Olympic legacy

The figures highlight the prevailing trend of top British athletes being educated at independent schools and call current state school sports provision into question.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt recently admitted that state school sports provision is “patchy”, while Britain’s Olympic Chief Lord Moynihan slammed the dominance of independent school medallists at Beijing, where more than 50 per cent of gold medals were won by privately educated athletes.

Now a growing group of top athletes, politicians and sports coaches has warned that all schools need to be encouraged and funded to secure the Olympic legacy.

“I think it’s really important to have great sport in schools and teach it well and obviously create great role models,” Jessica Ennis, who started doing athletics aged nine, told the Telegraph. “That will make a huge, huge difference.”

State school vs independent

The high proportion of Olympians who attended independent schools has been used by critics as proof of the inadequacy of state school facilities and mentoring. Fee-paying schools are more likely to have high-quality sporting facilities and specialist coaches with experienced in top-level Olympic sports.

The proportion of independently educated athletes is slightly lower within the current crop of gold medallists compared to four years ago at Beijing: Channel 4 News can reveal that 30 per cent were educated at independent schools – 11 out of 37 athletes [see chart below].

Team GB has won 51 medals so far, but because of team sports, there are now 81 British medallists. Of this total so far, 31 were educated at independent schools – 38 per cent of the current squad, compared to just seven per cent of the population. In addition, the largest proportion of medallists was born in the south east of the UK, which is one of the most affluent regions.

{“dataSourceUrl”:”//docs.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AjAj5sDmejrgdDV0OU12ODFiUlpQX3Rwc09URUd1OGc&transpose=1&headers=1&range=A7%3AD9&gid=9&pub=1″,”options”:{“vAxes”:{“1”:{“useFormatFromData”:true},”0″:{“useFormatFromData”:true}},”series”:{“1”:{“color”:”#1155cc”},”0″:{“color”:”#674ea7″}},”title”:”Team GB medallists: state vs independent”,”booleanRole”:”certainty”,”animation”:{“duration”:0},”hAxis”:{“useFormatFromData”:true,”viewWindowMode”:”pretty”,”viewWindow”:{}},”isStacked”:true,”width”:620,”height”:300},”state”:{},”chartType”:”BarChart”,”chartName”:”Chart 2″}

Cuts to sports funding

More than £264m from the government and National Lottery funding has supported Olympic sports from 2009 to 2013 – money that was aimed at helping British athletes perform to their potential at London 2012. But this funding is only guaranteed until 2015, when the government is expected to reduce its contribution.

Despite mounting pressure over securing the Olympics legacy, the coalition government has approved the sale of 21 playing fields since it came to power. Funding for school sports partnerships, where schools in local areas work together to supply sport facilities and coaching, has also been cut by the coalition while Education Minister Michael Gove scrapped the compulsory two hours a week of PE for pupils.

However David Cameron said that money is not the “only problem” with helping state school pupils to access sports provision. The prime minister called for a return of a “competitive ethos” and an increase in volunteering, and criticised teachers who are unwilling to get involved in coaching.

Olympics ‘pressure cooker’

Joining Ennis’s call for improvements in school sports were Laura Trott, Sir Matthew Pinsent and former Olympic athlete Roger Black, as well as Fuzz Ahmed who coached Robbie Grabarz to a high jump bronze.

“There’s a pressure cooker here. If we take the lid off that pressure cooker all that energy, all that beautiful stuff that’s cooking in there, will be gone,” said Grabarz. “We’re 20 years ahead of the rest of the world. It’s going to take them a long time to catch up with us.”

Governments ‘treading water’

Mr Hunt has acknowledged there are problems with current provision: “I think at the moment school sport provision is patchy in some places, and we need to do what we can to make sure that the very best examples are spread throughout the whole country,” he said, “and this is absolutely going to be a focus over the next few months and one of the things that we really want to take away from these Games.”

Lord Moynihan said that governments have been “treading water” on this issue for seven years. “There is a need for radical reform and I am calling for more money. There needs to be a total commitment to ensuring a sports participation legacy that has to focus on schools and clubs.”