Strictly star and former Olympic and Paralympic athletes give evidence to CMS Committee on school and community sport
The Culture, Media and Sport Committee will investigate the challenges in provision of sport for children and young people in and out of school in the first session of its new inquiry – Game On: Community and school sport.
Meeting details
MPs will question former athletes including Olympic sprinter-turned-Strictly Come Dancing and Gladiators star Montell Douglas; Alistair Patrick-Heselton, who revived his professional footballing career after a severe car accident and represented Team GB at the 2021 Paralympic World Cup Final; and swimmer Anna Hopkin MBE, who won gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as part of the mixed 4x100m medley relay team. They will be joined by Ali Oliver MBE, CEO of the Youth Sport Trust Charity, which provides opportunities for young people to be active and coordinates national programmes to promote sport participation. Douglas and Patrick-Heselton are also mentors for the charity.
There will be questions about how to foster stronger relationships between children and sport, and whether PE should become a core subject in school. The suggestion comes after research by the Youth Sport Trust found that 41,000 fewer hours of PE were taught in 2023/24 compared to 2011/12. Less than half of children are completing 60 minutes of exercise per day, as recommended by the UK Chief Medical Officers.
Witnesses may be asked for their views on current Government policies designed to increase sports participation in school, and whether the Government should introduce new policies n, such as the School Sports Partnership programme which was scrapped after 2010.
The cross-party Committee will ask about ways to boost physical activity by making school facilities available to communities outside of term time, and how to tackle disparities in participation between demographics. For example, research has shown that only one in four disabled children regularly take part in sport at school, girls are more likely than boys to stop taking part in sport as they go through secondary school, and children of Asian heritage and from less affluent backgrounds take part in less exercise.
The three athletes on the panel will be asked about their experiences of sport as children – the people who fostered their interest and the choices they had available in their communities both inside and out of school.