Our ideas
Sport
We want the inspiration offered by the 2012 Games to transform young people's participation in sport and physical activity.
We want to increase grass-roots participation, develop a competitive sports framework for all children and young people, and create a supportive framework for our most talented young athletes.
We are taking a number of steps towards achieving these aims.
- Funding a programme to make primary school playgrounds more fun and encourage increased levels of physical activity - see the Youth Sport Trust website.
- Investigating how to enable Further Education (FE) students to take part in a wide variety of sports through the sports network. We will be encouraging FE colleges to open their facilities for sports partnership and community use. More information on the school sport strategy is available on the Department’s Teachernet site.
- Promoting an annual UK Schools Games that provides a showcase for talented young disabled and non-disabled athletes. For more information see the UK School Games 2007 website.
- Starting next year, we will put in place an annual residential camp to prepare gifted and talented young athletes to manage the demands of elite sport, full time education and their home and social lives. More information on support for talented young athletes is available on the Youth Sport Trust website.
Aim higher
We want the Higher Education (HE) sector to support our aims for young people and sport. UK Sport, Sport England and the Higher Education Funding Council Executive (HEFCE) have agreed to fund work to develop a cross-HE strategy that will include moves to increase student participation in sport and physical activity and develop a university network of centres of sporting excellence.
The HE sector also has a role to play in elite performance research, and we will be encouraging the development of a coordinated programme of research in the run up to 2012.
We are currently working with the Department of Health to identify how we can use 2012 to support strategies to encourage young people to make healthy living choices around, for example, food, substance misuse and sexual health; and to encourage a whole-school approach to physical activity.
