Special report: A third of children cannot swim with British schools sport in crisis

Sport in British state schools is in ‘crisis’, with a ‘Covid cohort’ of children not returning to physical activity after the pandemic and fixtures routinely cancelled because of a lack of available minibuses.

A Telegraph Sport investigation has highlighted the desperate plight of physical activity in the state sector, and can reveal:

• Fears that the neglect of sport is leading to catastrophic effects on childhood obesity and mental health

• A recent surge in the number of children unable to swim

• Most 14-16-year-olds are believed to not be meeting the national target of two hours of school sport a week

• Young girls remain far less likely to exercise regularly than boys

• Anger among PE teachers that sport is considered a ‘soft target’ and the easiest subject to cut spending on

• Growing inequality between the availability of sport in private and state schools

• Sixth-form sport has ‘died away’, with estimates that more than half of all state-educated children aged 16-18 are now doing no school sport at all

Most children are failing to meet the UK Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines for sport and physical activity, previously released figures have highlighted. It is recommended that children participate in an average of 60 minutes of sport and physical activity every day, either in school or outside. But 52.2 per cent of children are missing this target, while 29.6 per cent are not even averaging 30 minutes of activity per day.

The total hours of PE taught in English state schools annually has dropped by 41,000 since the 2012 Olympics – a decrease of 12 per cent. There has been a seven per cent reduction in the number of PE teachers in England in the same period.

While the metrics used in different countries within the UK vary slightly, the situation is viewed as similarly worrying across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

“We have a crisis of well-being in children which is inextricably linked to a lack of physical activity,” said Alison Oliver, the chief executive of the charity Youth Sport Trust. “In other countries, physical activity levels of children are higher and physical activity is valued as part of the culture.”

A lack of exercise is seen as a critical contributor to the dire mental health of British children. A quarter of British 15-year-olds report being unhappy, which is a higher proportion than in any other European country.

The decline in school sport – both formally organised games and informal play, such as during lunch breaks – is “a tragedy,” Oliver said. “Sport has been squeezed as the accountability measures for schools have focused on getting children through a narrow set of exams”.

“It’s a position that nobody is content with,” said Nick Pontefract, Sport England’s chief strategy officer. “Nobody would say that having less than half of kids doing enough activity is the place that we want to get to.”

Covid-19 exacerbated the crisis. “The pandemic accelerated what were already some significant lifestyle trends,” Oliver said.

Children who were between the age of four and nine in 2020 have particularly suffered since, Sport England has found. This cohort, now aged 8-13, remain significantly less likely to have positive attitudes towards physical activity than previous generations. They also have lower levels of happiness and self-confidence.

“We’re looking at the emergence of a Covid cohort,” said Pontefract. “Children that were most impacted by Covid have had the greatest hit on the things that will get them to be active and stay active.”

The pandemic has transformed the youth sports landscape. Children have increasingly come to rely more on digital interaction than physical interaction, said Kate Thornton-Bousfield, the chief executive of the Association for Physical Education.

“Sport was one thing that a lot of people lost in the pandemic and then they didn’t get back into it. I don’t think we ever recovered from that. Now, children socialise through their tablets and their phones, and not necessarily through sport.

“Trying to get back into sport has been very, very challenging for some youngsters. They just lack the confidence and social skills.”

Teachers are complaining about cuts to the PE budget and how the time given to lessons has diminished. Since the pandemic, many schools have reduced lesson time for sport to make more space for academic subjects.

Shortage of minibuses and rise in overheads

A shortage of minibuses is also contributing to a reduction in competitive sport between state schools. “We have 1,500 kids in our school and one minibus that can take only 16 kids at a time,” said Brian McArdle, a PE teacher at Bulmershe School in Woodley, Berkshire. Bulmershe School previously had three minibuses. Unless it hires an additional minibus at extra cost, it can now only play one away fixture at any time.

“Every week, fixtures are getting cancelled because schools cannot get teams out or can’t get members of staff out to run the fixture,” said Thornton-Bousfield. Safeguarding laws requiring two members of staff to take a team on trips have contributed to an increase in costs, which has not been compensated for by a rise in government funding.

After-school clubs have also declined, with teachers stretched and staff receiving no extra payment to run teams. Rising electricity costs have led to schools rationalising how much they use lighting in their sports halls and outdoor facilities.

A growing number of schools are believed to be failing to meet sport and physical activity guidelines. A “majority” of state pupils aged 14-16 are now doing only an hour of sport a week in school, Thornton-Bousfield said. The figure can be as little as 30-40 minutes after pupils reach the lesson and then get changed.

“By the time it gets to February half-term, children at some schools won’t do any physical activity in year 11 because they have been taken for intervention in English, Maths or Science,” McArdle said.

Over half of all children aged 16-18 are now estimated to be doing no school sport at all.

“We don’t do sixth-form sport anymore – so when they get to 16, they don’t play sport,” McArdle said. “We used to have a protected hour where children in sixth form would play sport. Gradually, over the last 10 years, sixth-form sport has died away.”

McArdle believes that school sport is in a worse state than at any point since he started teaching in 2007. “Fitness levels have dropped – it’s definitely gone backwards.

“There are fewer kids playing sport in schools than there were 18 years ago. Our number of kids that play sport has definitely declined over the last 10 years.”

‘Too many children leave school unable to swim’

Swimming is in crisis. In recent years, McArdle has seen a sharp rise in the number of children arriving at secondary school who cannot swim. “They didn’t learn to swim at primary school. Some of them missed out during Covid. Post-Covid, there was an issue with people not being able to get swimming lessons because everywhere was full.”

Last year, Sport England found that 30 per cent of children cannot swim 25 metres unaided when they leave primary school – a seven per cent increase on 2017-18.

“We are seeing a lasting impact on Covid which has affected a whole cohort of children who have been making their way through the school system,” said Philip Brownlie from Swim England. “Too many children are currently being failed by the system and leaving school unable to swim and be safe in water.” Just 35 per cent of children from low-affluent families can swim 25 metres unaided, compared to 82 per cent from affluent families.

Over 400 public swimming pools have closed since 2010. One third of primary schools now deliver 10 or fewer swimming lessons to pupils before they leave.

Swimming’s plight illustrates broader concerns about primary school sport. According to Department for Education data from 2023, 44 per cent of primary school teachers do not feel confident enough to deliver PE.

Despite recent efforts, notably Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, there remains a notable gender gap in physical activity. Only 45 per cent of girls take part in an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity every day. And 34 per cent of girls say that they do not enjoy PE at school, 2.5 times the proportion of boys.

Social media has contributed to more girls suffering “feelings of low esteem and self-worth,” creating an extra barrier to sports participation, said Jen Angove, head of PE at Werneth School in Bredbury, Greater Manchester.

Oliver also suggested that periods had become more of an obstacle to girls playing sport. She said: “Period poverty and whether girls have got period products which make them feel comfortable taking part in sport has become a growing issue because of the economic crisis, and families having to make really tough decisions about what they can afford.”

Last April, Sir Keir Starmer bemoaned that children were being “locked out of emulating their heroes” due to a lack of PE provision. Six months after the general election, campaigners hope that a review of the curriculum will lead to sport being afforded far more attention in the state sector.

The unequal access to sport

“The gap is widening” between private and state schools, warned Thornton-Bousfield. Many major British sports teams, notably in cricket and rugby, have around half of players educated at private schools, compared to only seven per cent of the total population, though some of these benefited from scholarships.

Even within the state sector, there are also huge divisions in access to sport. PE in many schools is being pared back because of the economic situation. “We’ve limited what PE kit we expect kids to buy at our school,” McArdle said. “It can affect your teaching.”

“The biggest single marker of whether or not you’re going to be active or not is your family affluence and how well-to-do the place that you live in is,” said Pontefract. “That is not something that we’re remotely comfortable with.”

Unequal access to sport appears to be impacting children’s mental health. Studies have repeatedly found strong causal links between people being more physically active and reporting greater levels of happiness.

“It’s really a bit of a mess,” Thornton-Bousfield said. “Parents can’t afford to take children to some of those sports clubs anymore, or pay the subs, or pay the petrol to get them there.”

People who are not physically active as children are in turn far less likely to be active later in life: the crisis of school sport is contributing to a long-term obesity epidemic. By the age of 11, 22 per cent of children are already obese, which increases to 26 per cent among adults.

“Inactive children become inactive adults, who then become inactive parents themselves,” Oliver said. “We need to reset children’s lifestyles if we want to change the nation’s health.”