Speech at Sports Colleges Conference
1 February 2008
Gordon Brown has launched a new drive to encourage children to do more sport. The Prime Minister called for a national team effort by parents, teachers, sporting talents and volunteers to help make sport a central part of every child's life and unlock their talent.
Read the transcript
I'm here today to congratulate you on the success of all our 448 sports colleges;
To thank you for your dynamism, your leadership and your sheer scale of achievement;
To celebrate all headteachers and all of you as teachers who motivate and inspire young people in every part of the country;
And to say the whole country owes you a debt of gratitude for what you are achieving.
And let me start by thanking not only you for your dedication and for the difference you are making but also Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sport and the Youth Sport Trust, for the great leap forward she has made in helping young people use sport as a catalyst for energising their lives.
And to congratulate Dame Kelly Holmes, our national School Sports Champion, for her tireless work not just in helping more of our youngsters unlock their sporting talents but also in taking a stand against bullying in our schools.
Kelly's a hugely popular figure and someone of whom the whole country is immensely proud. But she's not just here today to accept plaudits from me, even though she richly deserves them all. She's here because she represents something that I want young people in this country to aspire to.
Injuries hampered her and for a long time, it seemed to many people that she would never achieve her dreams.
But Kelly did not let injuries weaken her. Setbacks only made her stronger. And in 2004 she won that astonishing double gold at the Athens Olympics and provided the country with one of its most momentous sporting achievements. So that's why she's here. Because sport gave her the platform to astonish us with the fortitude and the perseverance of the human spirit.
And today gives me an opportunity to congratulate you as teachers not only on your determination and vision but also to congratulate you now on your results you are achieving on the ground.
The difference we are seeing thanks to your vision and efforts are
- that sports colleges are showing a faster rate of improvement in results;
- that this improvement goes right to the heart of the english and maths curriculum;
- that you are thus showing that emphasis on sports can drive through to better achievement in all parts of the curriculum;
- and that sport can be the motivator for success in the academic subjects as well.
My wife Sarah wrote a book for a charity she set up.
Her book was about asking people round the country who had inspired them.
More than half the people chosen as the leading inspiration were teachers.
Take one example - Alex Ferguson.
You might have thought he'd chosen a footballing hero.
A manager he'd admired.
A motivator in football training.
But he chose his school teacher.
Who after his father had been his great motivating force.
And he wanted to celebrate that fact.
And for so many of us, we remember our teachers.
I can still remember the names of every teacher.
I am sure you do as well.
A teacher can influence a child for life.
So I am grateful to be here to thank you.
But I know that its very much your approach - indeed why you are at this conference this week - that we are never complacent, we should never rest on our laurels, never relax.
That for you doing well is not enough.
We must do better.
And I am grateful to be here also because I believe what you are trying to achieve has a message for the whole country.
First, I - like you - love sports and in the coming few years want to see its influence spread right across the curriculum and society for good.
Second, I - like you - want to see even more opportunities for more of our young people.
Third, I - like you - believe that what sports can do most of all is do something that we have found difficult as a country to do --- do more to raise the level of aspiration among not just some pupils but all pupils in our schools.
And fourth, I believe sport can achieve something we need to achieve - that's involving parents far more in what we do.
First, what I remember most about my school days was sport - running, rugby, football, tennis. And I had the good fortune of playing rugby for what became a great rugby team when I was just fifteen.
But we all know what sport does. It challenges you to do better all the time.
I remember that what made me pay attention to eating the most nutritious foods and keeping my weight down was simply to keep fit and get picked for the school team.
And sport does a great deal more. We love it because of the influence it has.
Sports makes friends out of strangers;
It can turn outcasts into insiders and children who might fear they are misfits into part of the group;
And instead of exaggerating differences, it brings people from different backgrounds closer together.
US Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren once said he read the front pages of newspapers last because they focused on human failing.
He read the sports pages first because they focused on human accomplishments and achievements.
That's part of the power of sport and the way you have begun to harness it has been incredibly impressive.
The next 10 years hold out the prospect of a golden decade of sport in Britain: the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014, and - I sincerely hope - the rugby world cup in 2015 and the football world cup in 2018.
And just think how we can use these opportunities - when the eyes of the world will be on our country, and when so much world class sport will be taking place in Britain - to build a truly great culture of sport extending from the grass roots to the elite.
It won't happen by magic. It won't happen just because the Olympics are coming. It won't happen just because we want it to. Instead, to give today's children the chance to be tomorrow's sporting heroes, they need first class facilities and first class coaching. And specialist sports colleges will be right at the heart of this endeavour.
Sport has immense value for its own sake - but let us not forget what this particular movement of specialist schools is all about. You are fundamentally educationalists.
For we all know that the qualities required to reach the top in sport - commitment, determination, the ability to work as a team, to set goals, to cope with failure and to celebrate success - are also those that young people need to achieve excellence both at school and in their lives beyond.
So secondly what we want to do more of is to widen opportunity
I applaud what you are doing.
You believe that every child matters, that every child has potential. And that is why your primary objective is to use sport to raise academic achievement, to increase motivation to learn and to enhance engagement in the education process.
Indeed, in all that you do you demonstrate the very special power of sport: the power to raise aspirations.
Its ability to help raise expectations and life chances right across the board.
We remember that the great failure is not the child who doesn't reach the stars, but the child who has no stars to reach for.
My school motto was 'I will try my utmost'.
The motto of the school in the next-door town was 'Rise to the Light'.
And as I have travelled around the country I have seen just how aspirational and inspirational school mottos can be:
'No goal is beyond our reach'
'The best in everyone'
'Achievement beyond expectation'
'Excellence through endeavour'
'To strive and achieve is to succeed'
Or we could look to football:
Arsenal: "Victory through togetherness"
Tottenham: "To dare is to do"
Blackburn: "By skill and hard work"
Everton: "Nothing but the best is enough"
And all these mottos - though they tell us something profound about the spirit of the age in which they were written - are not simply mementos of the past...
They are a declaration of faith in the future - that education makes it possible for young people to bridge the gap between what they are and what they have it in themselves to become.
There's one other area for progress where sports has a huge influence - involving parents.
Through family fitness nights and other initiatives, you have utilised sport to more effectively involve parents in their children's education.
Parents who fell out after primary school now joining in at secondary school
And with your participation in a growing number of community initiatives - from pupils running sports activities for younger children to local voluntary groups being given free use of your facilities - sport is becoming the vehicle not just for engaging your own pupils but for improving the lives of hundreds of others in your local area.
So this is the great opportunity: if we can expand opportunity, aspiration and then parents participation together, then the outcomes for pupils, patients, parents and citizens will be fair - the result of the choices we make, the hard work and effort we put in - not imposed by the accident of birth or the brute luck of circumstance.
And in this way we will create a stronger, fairer society, with excellence within the reach of everyone, not just the few. Talent nurtured, effort rewarded. The merit of each in the service of all.
So what does it mean for the next stage for school sports?
Lets champion competition.
I was fortunate. I went to a school that aimed high. A school that had an ethos of striving, hard work and achievement. And that is what I want for every child in this country.
There was a time some years ago when the prevailing orthodoxy was that it was wrong for a child to want to win a race and even more wrong for a child to have to lose one. I have never subscribed to that - partly because, as a young rugby player, I experienced for myself the honour and the solidarity that you can achieve in defeat as well as in victory and the satisfaction that comes with having given everything to a cause.
There is nothing wrong in wanting to win.
There's nothing wrong in wanting to be the highest, the strongest and the quickest.
There's nothing wrong in dreaming of representing Britain at the London Olympics in 2012 and standing on the top step of the podium with a gold medal draped round your neck and the union jack climbing slowly up the flagpole.
Competition is the spice of life and it finds its purest expression in sport.
It does not matter if you are not the best just as long as you are always striving to be better.
It does not matter if you do not win, just as long as you are always giving everything to be the winner.
I know that we can tap into that spirit of competition in school sport. In fact, we are already tapping into it and it is not only improving the health and the attitude of our nation's children, but lifting their self-esteem and their educational achievement too.
So, in the run up to the 2012 Olympics, I want not just to continue to nurture specialist sports colleges but also to restore sport to its proper place in all our schools --- not as an after-school option for the able and enthusiastic few but as a central part of the experience of every child.
In the last five years alone, we have put £1.5 billion into providing more school sport in better facilities with a higher standard of coaching.
And a year ahead of schedule - because of your commitment - from a start of only 26 per cent six years ago we have exceeded our target of involving 85 per cent of all young people in two hours of high quality PE and sport a week.
But there is still a lot more we can do.
So I can tell you that the next three years will see an additional investment of more than £755 million to meet our pledge that, by 2012, all school pupils can take part in up to five hours sport a week.
And today Dame Kelly Holmes and I are launching a national School Sports Week - held this summer as part of a wider initiative to celebrate the talents of every young person in Britain - which will provide a showcase for school sports, culminating in the annual UK school games.
So during that week, young leaders and volunteers - like the inspirational young people I've just met on the Step into Sport programme - will run sports competitions for primary schools;
You, the specialist sport college hubs, will hold events for secondary schools;
And, of course, lots of schools will be keen to organise sports events of their own - everything from egg and spoon races with an emphasis on fun to track and field events that showcase the considerable sporting prowess of today's young athletes.
And as a result of the £100 million of new money I announced last year to give all pupils the chance to take part in more competitive sport, we will have at least 225 competition managers on the ground across the country by January next year; there will be a new national programme to put sports coordinators in Further Education colleges from this September; and additional funding will pay for coaches and multi-skill clubs for young people who have special needs.
And to give young people a platform to showcase their sporting talents and foster a sense of pride in their achievements across the academic year, Andy Burnham will outline his plans for a national school leagues tables website --- an online forum for posting results, goal scorers, race times, photos and footage of school sports events, which for pupils can become as exciting at the premier league. This could be a real tool for talent spotting - providing clubs both at home and overseas with the opportunity to see young British talent, building a culture of interest in school sport and firing young people's passion for sporting competition.
But you know - as I do - that giving our young people the chance to play sport at school is just the first step. If we are to give them the best chance of realising their sporting dreams, if we are to truly use sport to help maximise their potential, we also need to give young people - and their families - access to better sporting facilities outside school hours: with over the next three years to improve facilities for example, providing floodlights for inner city basketball courts that will enable young people to use them on dark winter evenings.
And building on the success of Tessa Sanderson's role as sports ambassador for Newham in London, we will work with Sport England, UK Sport and local authorities to put in place a large network of high profile sports ambassadors and champions up and down the country who will forge new sporting links between schools and the cities, towns and villages they serve.
Show me a sporting superstar and I'll show you a coach who inspired them when they were young. As an example, I think of the esteem in which players like David Beckham and Gary Neville still hold the former Manchester United youth team coach Eric Harrison and that tells me how important it is to have strong, bright, intuitive coaches moulding the futures of our talented young sportsmen and women.
And in the months ahead, I want to look at what more we can do to get people involved in coaching, officiating and volunteering in sport - not just for the sake of sport but for the whole of our society.
My ambition is to remove all the barriers to sporting talent, opening up new opportunities and facilities alike. And to do that we need a national team effort:
- by mainstream schools and specialist sports colleges,
- by parents and teachers,
- by those in the sports world and those who give up hours of their time to coach the local football team simply because of a love of the game.
If we all pull together, I believe we can not just make sport a central part of every child's life but utilise the power of sport to help every child make the most of their talents and potential.
And my goal - indeed part of our Olympic promise - is to achieve that not just here in Britain but around the world.
Many of you here have already forged dynamic partnerships with schools in other countries. And I can announce today that importantly by Olympic year 2012 all sports colleges in the UK will have a formal link with a school in the developing world ----- helping train sports teachers, encouraging millions more of the world's poorest children to play sport - and in doing so raise their aspirations and improve their health and their educational attainment.
On days like today, I can look around me and sense the beauty and the simplicity of sport and all the possibilities it holds out for our young people.
A large part of the race is still to be run but we've got off to a great start.
So thank you again for everything you have achieved.
I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future.
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