Inspiring Wales into Sport

With the 2014 Commonwealth Games now underway, it's worth looking at the
latest Plaid Cymru policy discussion paper - this time focusing on sports development.
(Pic : Wales Online)

It's seems you can't escape the sporting summer. A successful World Cup is now followed by the Commonwealth Games, with Team Wales (if there's enough of them left!) hoping to win 20+ medals.

Sport has also snuck its way into public policy debates, with ongoing concerns about rising obesity, impact of austerity on the costs associated with (and availability of) sporting activities, attempts to measure the legacy of the 2012 London Olympics and early hints that Wales might bid to host the Commonwealth Games in the 2020s (Could Wales host a Commonwealth Games?).

Back in June, Plaid Cymru offered their own ideas on sport in their Inspire Wales discussion paper (pdf).

This comes only months after the National Assembly's Communities & Local Government Committee inquiry into sports participation (Off the Bench – Boosting sports participation in Wales), and if you want to go further back, the recommendation from Tanni Grey-Thompson that PE should become a core subject in the National Curriculum.

Overcoming Barriers

The reasons why people do and don't take up sport and physical activity have been well worn now, so I'm only going to cover the current problems briefly, most of which were examined in detail by the Assembly inquiry.

Gender barriers – Boys are more likely to participate in sport and be "hooked on sport" than girls, though both sexes believe PE is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. There are big drop-off rates amongst girls in older age groups for reasons like body image and lack of confidence – many girls say they would do more sport if they were "better at it". Amongst adults, more men (46%) are hooked on sport than women (32%), and women are more likely than men to do no physical activity. There were also concerns raised during the committee inquiry about LGBTs, who feel sports clubs are "unwelcoming".

Socio-economic barriers – There's an 11% gap in sport participation between schools in wealthier areas and schools in more deprived areas. Sport Wales say things like cost of club membership, equipment and the price of using facilities are likely to put people in deprived areas off sport. Sports participation levels increase with household income – 89% for £52,000+ and just 54% for between £5,200-10,399. Although people from ethnic minorities are as likely as whites to be "hooked on sport", the low number of ethnic minority coaches and PE teachers was raised as a concern during the inquiry. There's evidence too that Welsh-speakers (46%) are more likely to participate or volunteer in sport than non-Welsh speakers (36%) for unknown reasons (but I suspect it'll be down to background not language).

Access barriers - Disabled children are less likely to participate in sport than able-bodied children, and that continues into adulthood, said to be down to cost, lack of facilities, attitudes and lack of transport amongst other things. The impact of local government budget cuts mean that there's the threat facilities will become increasingly unaffordable to the public at large.

What do Plaid Cymru put forward?

Some of the ideas include opening school sports facilities to the public, a "Wellbeing
Oyster Card" and ensuring school pupils get a minimum 2 hours of PE per week.
(Pic : ukminifootball.co.uk)

The paper puts forward several policy ideas:

• Research into why adults and children take up sports, but also the reasons why they drop-out. The lack of this sort of (vital) information was flagged up as a concern during the committee inquiry.
• Explore the possibility of placing a statutory duty on local authorities to deliver sport and leisure facilities, possibly extending to a requirement for schools to open their sports facilities to the public.
• Creating a regional structure for sport development similar to Ireland's Local Sports Partnerships, or the model used in the Nordic countries. These organisations oversee the development of sport clubs, help plan sports facilities at a local level and offer training and support to volunteers - all helping to link national governing bodies to the grass roots. It would also help smaller sports clubs start from scratch, with the policy aim being to create "sports programmes in which whole families can take part in together".
• A "Well-being Oyster Card" to enable use of local authority facilities across the whole of Wales, plus giving people a "right to access" leisure facilities for disabled and non-disabled people.
• Ensuring a minimum of 2 hours of "high quality" PE per week per pupil in the National Curriculum - with consultation with pupils as to the format. The current average is schools is 1hr 41minutes.
• An "Inspire Wales" programme where elite athletes would visit schools, leisure facilities etc. to encourage people to take up sport by discussing their own experiences. This is similar to the Canadian ESTEEM Team programme.

Inspiring Ideas?

The idea of 2 hours of "high quality" PE per pupil, per week is
very realistic - but is it ambitious enough?
(Pic : South Wales Argus)

Once again I'm impressed by one of these Plaid Cymru policy papers. There's a lot to like. Though there are a few points that need a bit more work.

Regional bodies might be the most boring part of this, but it is important. Ideally there would be a bit of joined-up thinking. Instead of sports – especially at the grassroots - being managed by central governing bodies, they would be structured around/affiliated to local authority athletic unions.

That sounds similar to what Plaid propose, and it would mean smaller, amateur clubs wouldn't have to jump through so many hoops, or deal with so many organisations, as there would (presumably) be one point of contact. It might make it easier to arrange local competitions too in a wider variety of sports (if there's enough interest).

I'm not sure what good an extra 19 minutes of PE a week, on average, will do. The Chief Medical Officer's recommendation for school-age children is between one and several hours (of "physical activity") a day, while the 5x60 scheme implies 5 hours a week. 2 hours is realistic, but it might not be ambitious enough unless every single child did sport outside of school hours.

The more important idea here is asking pupils what they would like to do. When I were't lad I doubt I was the only person who would deliberately try and get out certain PE activities but looked forward to others.

Plaid's proposal for a "right of access" will require more investment in
things like cycling routes. Should there be a ring-fenced budget?
(Pic : Road Safety Wales)

We also need to make sure that "physical activity" doesn't come to exclusively mean organised sport. I suppose the paper makes that point by putting forward what sounds like a proposal to create a Nordic-style "right of access".

Well, we need those facilities in the first place. Nobody seems to have a clue how much is going to be spent as a result of the Active Travel Act 2013, for example. It might be worth considering ring-fencing a sum to develop these open access areas, and provide the complementary measures to encourage walking and cycling to school and work; perhaps some sort of "walk/cycle miles" scheme in schools like "air miles" – which is used in New Zealand.

The "Well-being Oyster Card" is one of the more attention-grabbing ideas. The reason the Oyster Card works isn't just down to "turn up and go" convenience but flat fares - you know what you're going to pay across London regardless of trip.

The idea for a "Wellbeing Oyster Card" is attention-grabbing, but
would it require an equivalent of flat fares across Wales first?
(Pic : Centaman Entrance Control)

I'd imagine being able to use a single card to access local authority facilities across Wales – especially swimming pools - will be incredibly popular. But the difference in prices between council-run, outsourced and completely private facilities will make this tricky to implement. It's definitely an idea worthy of further work, and ideally would be extended to cover things like private gyms.

There's a lot of support already for opening school leisure facilities. It's common sense and is already being implemented in parts of Wales. Many new schools are designed with community facilities built in (i.e. Archbishop McGrath and Coleg Cymunedol y Dderwen in Bridgend; Aberdare High School under construction in Rhondda Cynon Taf; Rhosnesni High School in Wrexham). The trouble is opening sports facilities at older school sites might not be practical.

Getting sporting stars to visit schools as role models could have mixed results. The paper cites research from Scotland (Sporting Success Role Models - pdf) which says "no impacts have been robustly demonstrated" as to whether sporting role models encourage others to take part - ditto the fact that the positive effect of major sporting events is usually short-term.

The principle that former professional athletes (or, for example, those whose careers are cut short by injury) should be encouraged into coaching – maybe rotating around clubs in a particular region – is a common sense idea too. However, there's a risk that current elite sport stars will be too busy to coach as well as train, while former sport starts might not be well-known to younger generations to really make an impact.

So, on the whole, once again there's some good stuff from the "thinkers" in Plaid and plenty for the rest of us to consider.