The politics of playing fields

I have a small confession to make. I was the one who suggested that an independent panel should be set up to recommend which applications for playing fields should be approved and which should be rejected. The reason I did so was because such decisions are never black and white, and it made sense to involve the strongest critics in the decision-making process. So while I think he has made a serious political error, I have some sympathy for Michael Gove this morning, as he is assailed for approving five applications that the panel had rejected. But I also think the case highlights the need for far greater transparency in the whole process - and greater honesty about the issue on the part of the media.

In 1997, after thousands of playing fields had been sold off in the previous decades, Labour set a presumption against the sale of school playing fields for the first time. Schools should generally not sell off playing fields, except in circumstances where doing so would not reduce access to sport and the proceeds would be used to provide better sports facilities at the school. Around 200 applications were approved between 1997 and 2010 and in these cases such criteria were met. After 2001, the decision-making process was effectively delegated to an independent panel where critics of the sale of playing fields were included so they had to look at the reality of the issue on a case-by-case basis. The presumption against their sale was also strengthened a little.

I suggested the independent panel having spent many hours poring over the applications on behalf of ministers and discussing with officials the precise reasons for any case that they planned to recommend for acceptance. Although some such playing fields were overgrown disused patches of land, there were also cases of viable playing fields that were being sold to make major improvements in the quality of sports and other education in a school. Inevitably, however, there were strong opponents to each sale and each approval attracted widespread criticism. Hence the independent panel.

So, while I have some sympathy with Gove this morning, I think he made a major political error not accepting the recommendations of the panel. And he was also unwise to reduce restrictions on the amount of space that schools have to provide for sports. Remarkably, since the panel was established, there has been virtually no controversy about the sale of playing fields. Fields in Trust - as the National Playing Fields Association is now called - sits alongside representatives of headteachers and local authorities to act as an independent and fair-minded jury on each case. By overruling the panel, however justified he may have felt he was in the individual cases, he has re-politicised a process that had effectively been de-politicised. More importantly, the publicity around today's story may have made it that much harder for the panel to take genuinely independent decisions.

There is one aspect to the panel's workings that should change, however. They should have to publish their decisions on a regular basis. The Telegraph claims this morning that these are not made public. When I suggested the panel, I certainly assumed that their decisions and membership would be made public. There is no justification for this not being the case, as happens with the Schools Adjudicator on admissions, for example. That said, there must still be occasions - not many, it is true - when it is in the greater interest of pupils to sell a playing field to provide superior sporting facilities than it is for that land to remain largely unused. To their credit, Fields in Trust, through their participation in this process, recognised that reality. Others should too.

John Rentoul quoted from this post in his Independent on Sunday column.

Time for a rethink on school sports

At the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust conference in Birmingham this week, the strongest applause from the audience during the speeches of schools minister Nick Gibb and shadow education secretary Andy Burnham came when mention was made of the coalition's bizarre decision to axe the school sports partnerships that have revitalised PE and competitive sports in schools. Needless to say, the 2000 heads and school leaders were not applauding the rather thin defence being offered for the decision, nor did they buy the shameless spin that has accompanied the axe,

Today's Observer reports that ministers are frantically seeking a way out of the problem, which has already wrongfooted David Cameron at PMQs and threatens to undermine any hopes of a serious Olympics legacy among young people. Heads and pupils already threaten a national campaign that will embarrass even the most thick-skinned coalition MP. The fact that the SSPs have doubled participation in competitive team games and increased PE participation fourfold is dismissed by Cameron with statistics that no Labour spindoctor would have dared to disseminate. To imagine that a scheme that increases participation in inter-school competitions from 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 is a failure because 80% of young people are not so involved is both logically ludicrous and downright disingenuous. The clue is in the word 'competitive'.

But when the lead sports writer in the Sunday Times is as scathing as David Walsh is today (£), even Cameron's spin doctors must know the game is up. The coalition's ideological opposition to any ringfenced funding has come seriously unstuck. Now they just have to admit that there are occasions when such ringfenced funding is needed and desirable. Given that the funds are supposedly simply going to be added to the Dedicated Schools Grant, there should be nothing but a little loss of pride involved in re-ringfencing them: it should not trouble the Treasury one iota. The question is whether ministers are prepared to recognise that they have made a mistake, and effect the necessary rethink.

Sports axe highlights key flaws in Gove thinking

Today's reports about the deep dismay in sporting circles and the Cabinet over the decision to axe funding for school sports partnerships highlights a fatal flaw at the heart of Michael Gove's approach to schools. The partnerships have been remarkably successful, not only increasing participation with the numbers of pupils getting two hours PE a week rising from one in four to four in five, and an increase in competitions. It is absurd to suggest, as Gove did on Marr, that by removing ringfencing such activities could continue, since the co-ordinators are funded specifically to work across schools not in a single institution. In any case, the money is being removed from individual school budgets and handed to local authorities which can distribute it as they choose, a decision that makes little sense if Gove is no longer planning a National Funding Formula, as he now maintains.

But this decision also exposes two flaws that are becoming starker as Gove prepares to publish his White Paper this Wednesday. The first is the wholesale removal of leverage. Gove was able to dodge Marr's questioning about the curriculum adeptly this morning. But there remains a real contradiction between his wish to see a back to basics approach and his granting of considerably more freedoms to schools. Many academies, for example, want to use more thematic teaching and some of the vocational qualifications that the Government doesn't like. It is right to want a more rigorous approach to English grammar and spelling - and that was at the heart of Labour's literacy strategy - but the only way to ensure it happens is through strong pressure and accountability. At the same time, those academies can point to real success through curricular innovations and their voice will become louder if a more prescriptive approach is adopted.

And that also highlights a second flaw in Gove's thinking. For partisan reasons, he chooses to pretend that he is starting from scratch with some of his ideas. Yet he is not. For example, the so-called 'no touch' rule does not exist: David Blunkett published guidance on the use of restraint in 1998 that has been enshrined in the right to discipline within the 2006 Education Act. The problem is not a lack of legislation, it is a fear among teachers of litigation. And it is hard to see how Gove can prevent that happening, any more than his anonymity for teachers unjustly accused of abusing children can prevent village gossips retailing the charges widely.

The fact is that he has failed to resolve inherent contradictions in his approach: between curricular prescriptions and freedoms; between local authorities controlling pursestrings and the transparency of national funding; between permissive legislation and restrictive litigation. While there may be much that is good in this week's White Paper, not least the expansion of in-school teacher training, building on Labour's Teach First and graduate teacher programme and the development of collaboration between academies, the failure to think through the wider impact of funding decisions and to resolve such contradictions could seriously undermine his ambitions.

'Reviving' competitive sports

Good luck to the Michael Gove in his 'revival' of competitive sports as he takes forward school olympics plans, particularly if he builds on a huge revival in school sports under Labour. But I hope he doesn't fall for the myth that Labour engaged in some ludicrous 'war' on competitive sports. (Even in the 1980s, where I was schools press officer for the ILEA, I organised the launch of a detailed independent research report on team games in London schools, accompanied by great photos of scores of London school sporting success stories, disproving the idea that the ILEA - and not a few misguided heads - was anti-competitive sort. It won plaudits from the Mail and Telegraph at the time! The Labour political leadership of the ILEA in 1988 was keen to promote it in London schools.)

There were several important elements of Labour's approach in government: the first was to increase overall participation in sports and PE; the second was to protect school playing fields unless they were being replaced by other sports facilities; the third was to revive competitive team sports. The Youth Sports Trust was transformed into the successful organisation it is today. Using an increasing specialist sports school network, local sports co-ordinators were employed to help revive sports which declined under the last Conservative government largely because teachers declined to help with after-school coaching. All playing field sales have had to be approved by a body that includes the strongest campaigners against their sale - but critics ignore that growth in sports facilities that often resulted.

The number of specialist sports colleges was increased from 11 in 1997 to around 500 today, creating as many local networks which are key to the growth in sport. The proportion of young people doing at least two hours a week of sport a week has risen from 23 to 90 per cent. And great strides were made under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in increasing the numbers of pupils involved in competitions. Even between 2007 and 2009, competitive games were on the rise: in 2007, 98% of schools had sports day, 58% other intra school competitions and 35% were involved in inter-school competitions. By 2009, these last two figures had risen to 69% and 41%. I do hope that the Secretary of State builds on those successful structures and doesn't fall for the Daily Mail myth machine.

This post has been picked up by John Rentoul.

The Gradgrind school?

Several times a year, the Times arts commentator Richard Morrison writes a cliche-ridden piece that proclaims our schools to be Gradgrind institutions without sport, arts or a hinterland. Morrison repeats this canard today in his tirade against homework. As someone who has visited scores of schools and has been a school governor on a good but not atypical comprehensive for some years, I know this to be wide of the mark.

School sport has been revived, with lots of new competitions under way, thanks to the brilliant work of the Youth Sports Trust and specialist sports colleges. The sale of school playing fields - except to provide brand new sports facilities - has been halted for some years. Lottery funding has transformed many facilities. There are more active trips abroad than in the past. Music has been supported by hundreds of millions of new money. There is lots of great drama in our schools. Debating is seeing a return in many state schools. Some have their own radio stations, run by pupils. Most have seen a revival of after-school activities in the last decade, with lots of sports and hobby clubs, often supported by dedicated teachers. And cooking is being put back on the curriculum, thanks in part to Jamie Oliver.

Of course, schools want their pupils to get good qualifications, but most schools also place a lot more emphasis on pupils discovering new things for themselves than they did in the past, and on developing independent learners. The idea that good results are only being achieved at the expense of a 'hinterland' or creativity could only be written by someone who doesn't see enough of what really happens now in our state schools.

The myth of school playing field sales

Last Sunday's Observer was at it again. Claims that the government has been 'selling off' school playing fields were repeated. These claims have entered the ether as an indisputable 'truth' about Labour's record. And they are bunkum. The first ever protection of school playing fields was introduced in 1998 - it has been tightened further since. Those protections haven't meant no sales, but they do mean that the sale must lead to better sports facilities, something the absurd attacks wilfully ignore. The main critics of school playing field sales in the 1990s have acknowledged that the situation is very different from the Conservative years when 10,000 playing fields were sold. Indeed they have helped to design the tough rules, and Sport England must approve any sales. So, to realise quite how absurd the charges are now, do read all of Kevin Brennan's factual written statement on the subject this week, where he explained precisely how the proceeds of the handful of sales each year of what the Government calls "Areas of Land Capable of Being Used as a Small Sports Pitch" (since many of the sold 'playing fields' are actually overgrown and not used as playing fields at all) are being used.