The physical education and sport premium: Social justice, autonomy and school sport policy in England

ABSTRACT

Since the global economic recession, public services in the UK have been badly affected by austerity measures. However, whilst public services, including health, defence and the police faced significant cuts to their budgets, Primary Physical Education in England has actually received additional ring-fenced funding through the Physical Education and Sport Premium since 2013. This funding is provided directly to schools, and though the Department for Education provides guidance on how the Premium might be spent, schools effectively have autonomy to spend it in ways that they believe will best meet the needs of their learners and wider stakeholders. Utilising a mixed method approach involving analysing published material on school websites and semi-structured interviews with primary school and local authority staff, the aim of this article is to critically analyse how primary schools across a borough in the North West of England are spending the Premium. Our analysis is underpinned by principles of social justice, which we interpret as a marker for concerns to do with fairness, equality, exclusion, discrimination, power differentials and privilege. We argue that, in large part due to the autonomy of implementation, the Physical Education and Sport Premium has failed to realise its inherent social justice agenda in that investment in PE and school sport is unjust and too heavily dependent on the value placed upon it by individual schools. It is our contention therefore, that equal opportunities will remain unobtainable if the central tenets of the reproduction of privilege are allowed to remain uncontested.

KEYWORDS:

• (In)equality
• physical education and sport premium
• social justice
• sport policy
• primary education

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the help and support of Marek Ellis-Ebbrell, Dave Grant and Iain Lindsey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This policy only applies to England due to different educational policies through devolved powers that exist within the three other countries of the UK.

2. An administrative body in local government who traditionally had responsibility for running education services.

3. A multi-academy trust (MAT) is a single entity established to undertake a strategic collaboration to improve and maintain high educational standards across a number of schools. A group of schools forms a single MAT which has overarching responsibility for their governance.

4. The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015 is the official measure of relative deprivation for small areas (or neighbourhoods) in England.

5. National deciles of area deprivation are created through ranking small geographical populations known as Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) based on their deprivation score.

6. The Association for Physical Education is the only representative PE Subject Association in the UK.

7. School Games Organisers support the delivery of three distinct levels of competition ranging from intra – inter-school activity to county/national finals.

8. The Relationship Manager's responsibilities encompassed building relationships with a variety of groups and organisations to try to increase the number of sport and physical activity opportunities.

9. Deprivation deciles are based on the UK Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015 (IMD15), which is the official measure of relative deprivation.

10. School Games Organiser encourages schools to contribute the sum of £1800.00 into a pot. The SGO then develops competitions, CPD opportunities and tournaments for those schools to access.

11. Change4Life is a Public Health England initiative which aims to help family’s lead healthier lives by eating well and moving more. The Change4Life Zone is an online resource designed for primary school teachers and provides curriculum-linked materials and inspiration to help teach young people about healthy eating and staying active (Public Health England, no date).