Title: Foreword
Author: Kevin Dodd
Last saved by: BARKER LUELLA
Company: DCMS

Creating a sporting habit for life
A new youth sport strategy

Foreword
By Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics Media and Sport
Back in 2005, when Lord Coe and the rest of the bid team triumphed in Singapore, they did so with a simple promise: choose London and we will inspire a new generation to take up sport. 
Since then, the UK has been attempting something that no other host nation has achieved – to harness the power of the Olympics and Paralympics to create a deep and lasting legacy of sports participation in every community.
It is something that demands a strong political commitment – reflected in our decision to increase sport’s share of National Lottery funding to 20 per cent, and maintain investment in national governing bodies’ Whole Sport Plans.
And it also demands a clear programme of activity to increase opportunities to play sport – hence the £135 million support of community sport facilities and activity through Sport England’s Places, People, Play programme, and the creation of a new School Games competition, which will bring the excitement and challenge of structured competitive sport to thousands of schools across the UK.
Yet what we’ve also learnt over the last six years is that there can be no ‘plug and play’ sporting legacy from the Games.
As recent figures show, the challenge is not simply to build sports facilities but to fill them; and not simply to provide a short-term burst of interest and excitement, but offer long-term pathways that help young people continue playing sport into adulthood.
That is why, as 2012 begins, a new approach for England is needed – a more rigorous, targeted and results-orientated way of thinking about grassroots sport, which focuses all our energies into reaching out to young people more effectively. This will continue in the years after London 2012 as we seek to capitalise and build upon a series of world-class events coming to these shores.
By connecting sports clubs with schools and bringing sporting opportunities to people’s doorsteps, we can convert the interest and excitement young people will feel this year into a lifelong commitment to sport. I am delighted that five of our biggest sports have pledged to lead the way in improving links between schools and their own clubs.
We will bring a sharper sense of direction and purpose across the entire sporting family through payment-by-results: a collective discipline of building on what works, and discarding what doesn’t. The most successful organisations will be rewarded; and those which don’t deliver will see their funding reduced or removed. 
We know that building a more active sporting nation is a formidable challenge – arguably the biggest we face in bringing the Games to this country – but this new strategy provides us with the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Our task now is to make good on the original promise that Seb and his team made in Singapore – using London 2012 to inspire the nation and help young people in particular to start a sporting habit for life.
Quite simply, we will never have a better chance to transform our sporting culture than in the months and years ahead. Together, we need to make the most of this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

Jeremy Hunt
Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics Media and Sport

A new youth sport strategy
Inspiring a generation of young people to take up sport as a habit for life
The London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games will captivate the country this summer, and the exploits of our elite athletes will inspire young people, encouraging many to get into sport, determined to emulate their heroes. However, whilst we know that mega-events and their immediate aftermath often cause a surge in short-term sporting activity, maintaining that enthusiasm for the long-term is much harder. The key to making the most of the Games, and delivering a long-term step change in the number of people who play sport, is to create a sporting habit amongst our young people that will last a lifetime.
Since London won the right to stage the Games in 2005, participation rates amongst young people have fallen, with many of our major sports – including Football, Tennis and Swimming – seeing declines in the proportion of 16-25 year olds regularly taking part. Whilst participation rates remain relatively high in school (where curriculum Physical Education (PE) is compulsory), when young people leave school the proportion who continue to play sport falls dramatically. The problem is starker for girls, with around only a third participating in sport at 18 compared to two-thirds of boys. We are particularly keen to deal with this issue.
This new Youth Sport Strategy aims to increase consistently the number of young people developing sport as a habit for life. Over the next five years, Sport England will invest at least £1 billion of Lottery and Exchequer funding to help to ensure that young people are regularly playing sport and to break down the barriers that, until now, have prevented young people from continuing their interest in sport into their adult life. 
Sport England will work with schools, colleges and universities, as well as local County Sports Partnerships, the National Governing Bodies for sport, local authorities and the voluntary sector – the people who know sport and young people best – to improve the sporting offer that we make available to them.

Creating a sporting habit for life
We are seeking a consistent increase in the proportion of people regularly playing sport. In particular, we want to raise the proportion of 14-25 year olds who play sport and to establish a lasting network of links between schools and sports clubs in local communities so that we keep young people playing sport up to and beyond the age of 25.
We will do this in partnership with Sport England by:
•	Building a lasting legacy of competitive sport in schools – the School Games provides a framework for competitive school sport at school, district, county and national levels – with lottery, public and private sector funding of over £150m secured until 2015. In addition, PE will remain a compulsory part of the National Curriculum.
•	Improving links between schools and community sports clubs – we will work with sports such as Football, Cricket, Rugby Union, Rugby League and Tennis to establish at least 6,000 partnerships between schools and local sports clubs by 2017 – making it easier for young people to continue playing sport once they leave education. Our objective is that every secondary school and many primary schools will have links with at least one local club. In addition, every County Sport Partnership will have a dedicated officer responsible for making links between schools and community sports clubs in their local area.
•	Working with the sports governing bodies: focusing on youth – we will ask those sports governing bodies, where young people are the main participants, to spend around 60 per cent of their funding on activities that promote sport as a habit for life amongst young people. We will ensure that sports are completely focused on what they have to achieve, with payment by results – including the withdrawal of funding from governing bodies that fail to deliver agreed objectives. The system will be wholly transparent.
•	Investing in facilities – a further £160m will be spent on new and upgraded sports facilities, on top of the £90m already invested via Sport England’s Places, People, Play programme. This will include funding for the first time to allow schools to open up their sports facilities (three-quarters of all sports halls and a third of all swimming pools) to the public. 
•	Communities and the voluntary sector – we will also work with local authorities, voluntary groups and others to make the broadest possible sporting offer to young people. Between now and 2017, over £50m will be made available in funds which will be open to well-run sports clubs (whether or not they are connected to an NGB), voluntary groups and others to provide an exciting and appealing sporting experience. Overall, we are investing over £250m in community aspects of this strategy.

Building a lasting legacy of competitive sport in schools
The School Games
The School Games provides a unique opportunity to motivate and inspire millions of young people across the country to take part in more competitive school sport than ever before (www.yourschoolgames.com). 
All schools will be given the opportunity to create a year-round sporting calendar, with around 30 sports available, specifically designed to get young people competing at intra-school and inter-school levels and culminating in local, regional and national events. In May 2012, the first School Games National Final will take place in the Olympic Park – affording young people the incredible opportunity of competing at the venues just weeks before their Olympic and Paralympic heroes.
We want all young people, of all ages, abilities and backgrounds, to be involved. All sports that are part of the School Games will have competition formats for the inclusion of disabled young people, meaning that nearly half the schools in England will offer competitive disability sport for the first time. There will also be a strong cultural element to the School Games, including opening and closing ceremonies, as well as opportunities for students to get involved through organisation, officiating or volunteering.
Sport England, together with the Departments for Culture, Media and Sport, Health and Education are investing over £150m (both Exchequer and Lottery funding) in the School Games up to 2015. In addition, the School Games is being sponsored by Sainsbury’s – bringing in an additional £10m over the next four years – alongside a variety of other private sector partners. 

CASE STUDY – School Games
During June and July 2011, nine regional areas held county festivals of sport (Level 3 of the School Games); in total over 9,000 young people aged 7-19 years took part representing over 850 schools. 
The Greater Manchester School Games which took place in July 2011, involved over 1,500 young people representing 200 primary, secondary and special schools taking part in 11 different sports including athletics, badminton, netball, tennis, volleyball and swimming. Over 250 student volunteers formed the School Games Crew helping to run and promote the events. 
The Games were opened at the Regional Athletics Arena, with guests including Jason Gardener MBE and Tim Loughton MP after which the 1,500 young people began a day of competition using some of Manchester’s most prestigious 2002 Commonwealth Games facilities. 
Opening the Games, Tim Loughton MP, Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Children and Families, said: “The School Games gives us a great opportunity to enthuse and inspire young people across the Greater Manchester region. The Games are all about finding your passion, developing your talents and playing your part in this very special event.”
Richard Saunders, Greater Manchester Sport’s Chief Executive, said: “The Greater Manchester School Games were an outstanding success bringing together so many volunteers and competitors in some of the country’s best World Class sports facilities. Manchester’s support in offering the free use of their ex-Commonwealth Games facilities provided an inspiring backdrop for an event that our competitors and volunteers will never forget. This has been a landmark event for Greater Manchester which will give us the ideal platform to build on for next year’s exciting 2012 spectacular.” 

Improving links between schools and community sports clubs
Young people often try new sports for the first time at school, or when they go to college or university. However, whilst many young people enjoy that experience and take part enthusiastically, for a number of reasons, they don’t continue once they have left that structured environment – where facilities, team mates, coaches and competition are all readily available. 
Helping young people to continue to play sport outside school, college or university, when faced with the huge range of activities and other distractions competing for their time, is crucial to creating a sporting habit for life. 
We want to ensure that there are as many opportunities as possible for young people to play sport both inside and outside of school. To do this we will strengthen the relationship between clubs and schools, further education colleges and universities – creating a new network of school and community club links – involving every school and a wide range of sports which are most attractive to young people across the country.
By 2017 we will have established at least 6,000 new school-club links. Football has pledged that 2,000 of their clubs will be linked to secondary schools, Cricket 1,250, Rugby Union 1,300, Rugby League another 1,000 and Tennis has pledged 1,000. This is a great commitment to the new strategy from our biggest sports. NGBs, together with local partners, will create a new satellite club on a school setting, linked to an existing community ‘hub’ club, and run by coaches and volunteers from that hub club. By being located on a school site, the satellite club is within easy reach of young people, but is distinct from school PE as it is run by community volunteers. Participants in the satellite club are taken to the hub club and in this way make the transition into the community setting. 
Every secondary school in England will be offered a community sport club on its site and will have a direct link to one or more of the sports’ governing bodies. Through their Whole Sport Plans, the governing bodies will have to demonstrate the steps they will take to improve the transition from school to community clubs and County Sports Partnerships will be given new resources to create effective local links between schools and sport in the community. This will build upon existing health investment in Change4Life Clubs in schools in England.
At least 150 further education colleges will benefit from a full-time sports professional who will be responsible for delivering new sporting opportunities for students and we will ensure that three-quarters of university students aged 18-24 get the chance to take up a new sport or continue playing a sport they played at school or college.

CASE STUDY – Boxing in East London
West Ham Amateur Boxing Club (ABC) is based in East London and has over 130 members. The skills, discipline and self-confidence that boxing teaches, has proved so popular that the club is over-subscribed. With help from Newham College, West Ham ABC has established a satellite club specifically for young people in schools and colleges from the local area who want to take up boxing and also offers adapted versions of the sport. Coaches from the West Ham club run sessions at Newham College – giving a real feeling that it is a true extension of the original club and they support the transition of the young people from the college satellite to the main club. The weekly sessions are now attracting 20-30 youngsters on a regular basis, with demand continuing to grow. Around a third of the participants are girls from a broad mix of backgrounds and six out of 10 of those introduced to boxing have carried on with the sport regularly. The club has been supported by the County Sports Partnership, Pro-Active East London and the local ABAE Boxing Development Officer has been asked to to set up and develop the satellite club.

Working with sports governing bodies
Focusing on youth
Whole Sport Plans are the delivery contract between Sport England and each of the 46 funded National Governing Bodies for Sport (NGBs). They set out how Exchequer and Lottery funding will be spent and what outcomes the public can expect to see for this investment. As a result of the Whole Sport Plan approach, those who know sport best are taking the decisions that will affect the development of their sport at a local and national level. We want to continue and consolidate this approach in the next round of Whole Sport Plans which runs from 2013 to 2017.
This new strategy means a significant shift in focus for many NGBs. For the first time, as part of the new Whole Sport Plans, NGBs will be tasked with delivery of increased participation for young people under 16. The 2013-17 Whole Sport Plans will reach down to age 14, and will primarily be focused on the 14-25 year old age group – with at least 60 per cent of funding aimed at those young people. This ratio will not be applied uniformly but will depend on the age profile of the participants of each sport and the nature of their programmes.
Each Whole Sport Plan will include ambitious objectives to ensure that sports deliver increased participation for both youth and adults alike. We will also institute a new performance management regime, with a strict payment-by-results system. For sports that don’t deliver on their ambitions, there will be clear financial sanctions; for those that are delivering well, they will be able to access more funds in order to expand their good work. The principle of review and reward will be built into the system – so if an NGB fails to meet its contracted objectives, the funding withheld will then be accessible to other groups which can offer strong business cases for increasing participation.
The following principles will apply to the funding that each National Governing Body receives from Sport England:
•	Whole Sport Plan funding is a privilege, not an entitlement, and will be awarded on a payment-by-results basis
•	Funding will be awarded on a competitive basis to those who put forward the strongest plans and have a good track record on delivery
•	Value for money will be a key consideration and NGBs will need to demonstrate how they will connect, work and have an impact on participation at the local level
•	Whole Sport Plan investment should deliver the following outcomes:
o	A growth in participation in the 14-25 age range
o	A growth in participation across the adult population
o	An excellent sporting experience to keep people playing sport
o	High quality talent development to create better talent pool and help those with real potential to make the grade
o	A growth in participation by people who have disabilities, including the most talented
•	A proportion of total investment for 2013-17 will form a ‘Reward and Incentive Fund’ which will be allocated to NGBs who perform exceptionally well to enable them to do more
•	NGBs whose sports are played in schools must deliver much stronger links between school sport and club and community sport
•	To be eligible for Whole Sport Plan funding, NGBs must also meet high standards of governance and financial control. All public funding allocated will be published and meet Government transparency guidelines.

CASE STUDY – British Cycling Whole Sport Plan approach
Cycling in Britain has enjoyed a renaissance in the past 10 years with elite success on both the road and the track, and increasing numbers of people cycling for leisure, either as part of their daily commute or as sport. British Cycling has played a crucial role in the development of the sport over that period. With support from UK Sport, British Cycling won 14 Olympic and 20 Paralympic gold medals in Beijing and has successfully established a new road racing team. At the grassroots level, funded and supported by Sport England, cycling has also seen an increase in participation in recent years with a 65 per cent rise in membership of cycling clubs across the country and an additional 114,000 people cycling for sport from 2005 to 2009.
British Cycling is working in a variety of ways to make sure it builds on those successes in its most recent Whole Sport Plan. It is investing in clubs and offering some innovative and attractive membership schemes; it is also encouraging more volunteers and coaches into their sport and is funding cycling development officers focusing on how to attract more young people into cycling. Across the UK there are over 200 school / club links and British Cycling’s Go-Ride has had significant success in encouraging young people into the sport. The next round of Whole Sport Plans will see British Cycling having a renewed focus on getting even more people to take up cycling and develop a passion for the sport that will last a lifetime.

Investing in facilities 
Facilities
Underpinning any strategy for increasing the number of people enjoying and regularly participating in sport must be a programme of investment in the provision of high-quality sports facilities. 
As part of the Places, People, Play initiative, Sport England has already committed £50m of Lottery funding to upgrade up to a thousand local sports clubs and facilities, as well as £30m for new iconic multi-sport facilities and £10m to provide renewed protection of playing fields (www.sportengland.org/placespeopleplay).
Building on the success of the first round of grants, and phenomenal interest from across the country, Sport England will now invest a further £160m of Lottery funding into building or improving facilities and local clubs. 

CASE STUDY – Brighton Swimming Club
Brighton Swimming Club, England’s oldest swimming club, has been awarded £50,000 through Sport England’s Inspired Facilities fund – part of the Places, People, Play programme – to relocate the club and its changing rooms to new spacious facilities on the sea front. The buildings have been donated by the council and the Lottery award will refurbish them to create new changing accommodation, accessible for disabled people, and suitable for children – ensuring Brighton’s swimmers can continue to enjoy swimming in the sea off the South Coast for another 150 years.
Whilst some communities are in need of new sporting facilities, or upgrades to existing ones that have fallen into a state of disrepair, others have the pitches and halls they need, but they simply aren’t being used regularly enough.
Three-quarters of sports halls and artificial sports pitches and a third of swimming pools in England are located in schools. However, many of these facilities are under-used – enjoyed by children during term time but left dormant during the holidays or in the evening. To maximise these valuable sporting assets, Sport England will make £10m Lottery funding available to schools to enable them to open up their sports facilities for use by their local communities and will help them to maximise the use of all their pools, pitches and sports halls.

Opening up provision and investing in communities
Whilst NGBs, schools and further and higher education institutions play a crucial role in getting more young people to play sport, we also want to encourage local authorities, those clubs that are not associated with an NGB, voluntary groups and others to provide an exciting and appealing sporting experience. 
We know young people are drawn to a variety of different types of clubs and we want to make sure we engage as many young people as possible in sport. Sport England will establish a dedicated funding stream for local community clubs who will support our aim of creating a sporting habit for life.
Sport England will work with StreetGames, amongst other partners, to extend the reach of their Door Step Sport programme by creating 1,000 sustainable Door Step Clubs, taking sport to where young people live. Sport England will also work with the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust to expand their Get on Track programme which will place at least 2,000 youngsters on the very margins of our society into sports projects that also teach them vital life skills.

CASE STUDY – Door Step Badminton Club, East Birmingham
Badminton England and StreetGames came together to provide 10 weekly badminton sessions for teenagers from disadvantaged areas in East Birmingham. Finding facilities that were within walking distance of the participant’s homes, and ensuring the coaches who led the sessions had the right skills as well as the necessary empathy with the young people they were working with, were both crucial success factors for this pilot scheme. Having encouraged hundreds of young people to give the sport a try in Birmingham, Badminton England worked with the sports hall in the local community to become part of their No Strings network – creating a local club which allowed the young people to continue to play badminton in an informal environment with no joining fee, no membership fee and no need for a partner – creating a club that could sustain itself for the long term.
In addition, and in keeping with the ethos of Lottery funding, Sport England will make sure that any non-profit making community group or organisation which can help young people build a sporting habit for life has the chance to bid for funding. The process will be clear and simple, building on the success of the Inspired Facilities programme, which attracted bids from over 600 local clubs and similar organisations, many of whom had not received lottery funding before.
When inviting bids for that funding, Sport England will be looking for:
•	A track record of working effectively with young people
•	Clear evidence of the ability to increase regular participation in sport
•	Value for money, with projects reaching as many young people as possible 
•	Organisations that are well connected to their local communities, and have based their proposals on consultation with those with whom they will be working
Sport England will also seek to work as widely as possible across England, covering rural as well as urban areas, and funding a wide range of different organisations.

CASE STUDY – Boxing club is first to benefit from sporting legacy fund
Moss Side Boxing & Athletics Association in Manchester has become the first project to benefit from Sport England’s Inspired Facilities Fund, which has proved hugely popular with community sports groups, attracting over six hundred first round applications. 
Part of the £135m Places, People, Play Olympic and Paralympic legacy programme, Inspired Facilities will breathe new life into tired facilities that can be unattractive to sports participants and difficult to maintain and run.
The club, which has helped thousands of local people get into sport since it opened its doors in 1981, will use the National Lottery investment to upgrade facilities at the gym. “We are delighted to secure the first Inspired Facilities grant, which will enable us to upgrade the quality of our premises to match the quality of our boxing coaches,” said Maurice Core, Head Coach and club Chair. “It is the cornerstone of our strategy to have an outstanding club for the 2012 Olympics’ legacy.”
Inspired Facilities has been designed to be as simple and accessible as possible for potential applicants, with a shorter form and a catalogue of ready-made options to choose from. “This is a fantastic funding project that will deliver a real legacy from the London 2012 Games,” said Seb Coe, LOCOG Chair. “It will provide a whole range of sporting opportunities for young people through improved facilities and will I hope inspire them to take up sport.”