Gordon Brown has launched a new drive to encourage children to do more sport.
Read the transcript for the film below:
Gordon Brown:
Can I say I’m here today to congratulate all of you on the magnificent achievement. 448 sports colleges. Only 11 ten years ago. 500 by next year. And I want to thank all of you for your dynamism, your leadership, your sheer scale of achievement over these years. And I want us as a country to celebrate the work that head teachers and teachers do. You are motivating and inspiring young people in every part of the country, and the whole country owes every one of you a debt of gratitude. It’s a measure of your success that a few months ago I went to the UK School Games, and I started talking to some of the athletes who were participating. And I met a young girl who was 14 and she told me that she’d trained as a swimmer and she got up at four o’clock in the morning, trained before school, then went back training after school. And it was a measure of her ambition that she said to me, “Look, you can come and see me swim on Saturday or you can see me swim in the Olympics in 2012.” That’s the ambition of young people, and it’s thanks to you.
And let me start by thanking not just you for your dedication and for the difference that you are making, but let me thank Sue Campbell, who’s the chair of UK Sport and the Youth Sport Trust. And I want to thank her for the great leap forward that she has made possible, helping young people use sport as a catalyst for energising their lives. Sue, we are very grateful for what you’re doing.
And like every one of you, I want to thank Kelly Holmes. She is our national School Sports Champion, and it’s tireless work, not just in helping more of our young people unlock their sporting talents but she’s also taken a stand against bullying in schools. She runs classes to help young girls raise their aspirations. And she’s a hugely popular figure, as you know, in every part of the country, and we are immensely proud of her. And she’s not only here today to accept plaudits from me, even though she richly deserves them. She’s here because she represents something that I want every young person in this country to aspire to. I think we all remember that injuries hampered Kelly’s career, and for a long time it must have seemed that she would never have achieved her dreams. But she did not let injuries weaken her. Her setbacks only made her stronger. And in 2004 she won that astonishing double gold at the Athens Olympics and provided our country with one of its most memorable ever sporting achievements. So I want to thank you, Kelly, not just for what you have achieved but what you’re achieving now every day in inspiring a new generation of young people. We’re really proud of you.
And today gives me a unique opportunity, for which I’m really grateful, not only to congratulate you as teachers on your determination and your vision but to congratulate you on the results on the ground that you are already achieving. The difference that we are achieving in our country, thanks to your vision and your efforts, in the sports colleges that you are responsible for, are that sports colleges are showing a faster rate of improvement in results, that this improvement goes right to the heart of the curriculum, including English and maths, that you are showing that the emphasis on sport can drive through to better achievements in every part of the curriculum and that sport can be the great motivator for success in the academic fields as well. And it is thanks to you that this has been achieved. And I want the head teachers and the assistant head teachers who are here to go back to their schools to thank all the teachers for this magnificent achievement in the results you are delivering.
My wife Sarah once wrote a book to raise money for charity, and it consisted of asking people round the country who had been the most inspirational figure in inspiring them to do the things that they were doing. And it was really interesting, because it wasn’t pop stars and celebrities or famous names that were listed by people in every walk of life. The vast majority of people chose as their leading inspiration for what they were now doing, whether they were successful in business or enterprise or in culture or in arts and sports, or whatever they were successful in, the majority of people chose a teacher. If you take one example of someone who was in the book and who’s a friend of mine, Alex Ferguson. You might have thought Alex Ferguson would have chosen a footballing hero or a manager he had admired when he was young, or someone who had motivated the training system that he uses in football. He chose instead his school teacher, and he wanted to celebrate the fact it was his teacher that had pushed him to do the great things that he was able to do. And just all of us remember our individual teachers at school. I can still remember the names of every teacher I had at primary school and I’m sure most of you do as well. And a teacher can influence a child for life. And that’s why I believe that we should thank you for what you’re achieving now. And it’s what you achieve as individuals, often in a one-to-one relationship with your pupils, that really counts.
There’s a great story told about Field Marshal Montgomery during the Second World War, and he was preparing his troops for the Battle of Alamein. And he wasn’t an immodest man, General Montgomery, ’cause when he was asked who were the three greatest generals in history, he said the other two were Napoleon and Alexander the Great. And Montgomery was asking his troops what was the most important thing that they had. And he went round his troops and some said the gun they had and some said the kit and some said the equipment. And he said, “No, you’re totally wrong. The most important thing you have is you.” And it is you persuading young people that what’s important about them is developing their talent and their creativity and their ability that matters so much, and that’s why I’m grateful to be here to thank you.
But I know that this conference is built around this approach, indeed this is why you’re here, that we are not going to be complacent, that we will never rest on our laurels, that we will never relax, that we want to do better. Doing well is not enough. We all want to do better. And I am grateful to be here this afternoon because I believe what you are trying to achieve has a message for the whole of the country in the years to come. I, like you, love sports, and in the coming years I want to see the influence that sports has go right across the curriculum and the community and society for good. I, like you, want us to make sure that there are more opportunities for so many more young people in the years to come. And I, like you, believe that what sports can do almost most of all, and it’s something we’ve found difficult in our country, is to raise the level of aspiration amongst not just some pupils but all pupils, particularly those in danger of losing out or falling behind. And I think sport can achieve something else which I know many of you in your schools are already achieving. You involve parents far more than ever before. Them getting interested in sports gets them interested in what’s happening in the rest of the school and is a real boost for the pupils’ achievement.
Now, I remember most about my school days running, football, rugby, tennis. And I had the good fortune of playing rugby for what was a great school team when I was just 15. And we all know what sport can do. It challenges us to do better all the time. And I remember even then, at 15, what made me pay attention to eating the most nutritious foods and keeping your weight down was simply to get picked for the school team, so that your name on that Thursday morning was up on the board that you were playing for the team on the Saturday. And sport does a great deal more. We love it because of the influence it has more widely. Sport makes friends out of strangers. It can turn outcasts into insiders and children who might fear they are misfits into being part of a group. And instead of exaggerating differences, as we know from your relationships with countries round the world, it brings people from different backgrounds closer together. And it does something else. The famous American judge once said he read the front pages of the newspapers last because they focused on human failings, and he read the sports pages first because they focused on human accomplishments and human achievements. And that’s part of the power of sport, that it gives us a sense of what is possible for young people and others to achieve.
And I believe the next ten years for our country holds out the prospect of a golden decade for sport in Britain. The Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games in 2012. The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014. And I believe and sincerely hope we can win the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and the Football World Cup in England in 2018. And just think how we can use these great opportunities, when the eyes of the world will be on our country and when so much world-class sport will be seen in Britain, to build a truly great culture of sport extending from the grass roots right across to the best performers who win the medals. But you know it won’t happen by magic. It won’t just happen 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 champions and to engage in sport, they will need better facilities, first-class facilities, and they will need better coaching, first-class coaching. And specialist sports colleges like yours will be right at the heart of this endeavour.
So sport has this great, immense value for its own sake, but let’s not forget what it also achieves. It helps us be better at education, because it’s also here that you are fundamentally educationalists, and that means you want to bring out the potential in every child. You believe that every child matters, that every child has potential, and that is why a primary objective is to use sport to raise academic achievement as well, to increase the motivation to learn, to enhance involvement and engagement in education. And all that you do demonstrates this other power of sport, to raise people’s aspirations. It’s the ability to help raise expectations and life chances across the board. And we remember that the great failure, when we look at education, is not the child that doesn’t reach the stars. It’s the child who has no stars to reach for. My school motto was “I will try my utmost.” Down the road, the next school was “Rise to the light.” And as I have travelled round the country, it’s these aspirational messages in school mottos that can often make a huge difference. “No goal is beyond our reach” is one. “The best in everyone.” “Achievement beyond expectations.” “Excellence through endeavour.” “To strive and achieve is to succeed.” All these are mottos which point to the role of a school as making children more aspirational than ever they were before. And if you look at football teams, they also have their own mottos. Tottenham Hotspur: “To dare is to do.” Blackburn: “By skill and hard work.” That’s their motto. Arsenal: “Victory through togetherness.” Everton’s motto. Andy Burnham’s here. He’s an Everton supporter. Its motto is: “Nothing but the best is enough.” Although they may fail under the Trade Descriptions Act ’cause they haven’t won anything for 13 years. You know, all these mottos, though, are about aspiration. They’re about schools saying, “We want to give people the chance to bridge the gap between what they are and what they have it in themselves to become.” And they’re not mementos from the past. They’re a declaration of faith in the future.
And there’s one other area for progress where sports can make a huge difference in addition to making kids more aspirational, and that’s involving parents. Through family fitness nights, other initiatives that you’re doing, sport brings parents into their children’s education. Parents who fell out, perhaps, after they were involved in a primary school coming back because they see the sports activities they can engage in in 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 in the evening, sport is becoming the vehicle for engaging not just pupils but parents and the lives of hundreds of others in your local community. So this is the great opportunity for us all. If we can expand these opportunities, if we can raise children’s aspirations, if parents will participate more, then the outcomes for pupils, parents, communities and citizens will be fair and will give people more chances than they ever have had before.
So what does it mean for our policy as a government for the next stage for school sports? I believe we can do even more to encourage and champion competition in schools. As you know, there was a time some years ago when the prevailing orthodoxy was 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 never subscribed to that because, partly, as a young rugby player, I experienced for myself the honour and the solidarity that you can achieve even in defeat, as well as in victory, and the satisfaction that comes with having given everything to a cause. So there’s nothing wrong and everything good in wanting to win. There’s nothing wrong in aiming to be the highest, the strongest and the quickest. There’s nothing wrong, everything good, in dreaming of representing Britain at the Olympics in 2012 and standing, as Kelly did, 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 that finds its purest expression in sport. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not always the best just as long as you’re always striving to be better. It doesn’t matter if you do not win, just as long as you are always giving everything to be the winner. And I know that we can tap into that spirit of competition more in school sport, lifting young people’s self-esteem and then their educational achievement too. So in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, I want us as a country not just to continue to nurture the specialist sports colleges that you now represent but also to restore sport to its proper place in all our schools, not just an after-school option for the able and enthusiastic but a central part and a growing part of the experience of every child.
Now, in the last five years, we’ve put £1.5 billion into more school sport, with a higher standard of coaching. And a year ahead of schedule, starting off with only 26% getting two hours ten years ago, we’ve exceeded our targets involving 85% of young people in two hours of high-quality sport a week. But you know there is still much more to do. So the next three years will see an additional investment of more than three quarters of a billion pounds, £755 million, to meet our pledge, and I’m glad that Andy’s here today to repeat this from his position as minister in charge, that, by 2012, all school pupils can take up to five hours of sport a week. And today, as you know, and you’ve seen it in the video, Kelly Holmes and I are launching the national School Sports Week. It will be held this summer as part of an even wider initiative to celebrate the talents of every young person in Britain. And it will be a showcase for school sports, culminating in the annual UK School Games. And during that week, young leaders and volunteers, like the inspirational young people I’ve just met when I came in, will run sports competitions in primary schools. You, the specialist sports colleges, plan to hold events for secondary schools. And, of course, lots of schools will be keen to organise sports events on their own, with an emphasis on fun to track and field events that showcase the prowess of today’s young athletes. And, also, as a result of the £100 million that we 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 school coordinators in further educational colleges from this September, and additional funding will pay for coaches and multi-skill clubs for young people who have special needs which ought to be met. And to give young people a platform to showcase their talents, Andy will outline his plan for a national school league tables website. So it will be an online forum for posting results, for goal scorers, for photos and for footage of school sports events, which can become as exciting for pupils as all the websites on the leagues in other competitions. And this will be backed up outside school with over the next three years more money to improve facilities, for example, providing floodlights for inner-city basketball courts to enable young people to use them on dark winter evenings. And building on the success not just of Kelly’s role but of Tessa Sanderson’s role as sports ambassador for Newham in London, we want to 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, in different towns and cities and regions, to forge new sporting links between schools and the cities and towns and villages they serve. And I want to look at how we can do more, and perhaps we can consult with you on this, to get more people involved voluntarily in coaching, officiating at and participating in sports events.
So our ambition is very simple. It’s to remove all the barriers to sporting talent opening up, to open up new opportunities and facilities alike. And to do that we need a national effort, all of us working together, sports colleges, parents and those in the sports world who can be role models for our young people. And if we can all pull together, I believe we can not just make sport a central part of everybody’s life but the power of sport can help every child make the most of their talents. My goal, indeed part of our Olympic promise, is to achieve that not just here in Britain but to work to achieve it in other countries of the world. And many of you are forging dynamic partnerships with other countries. And I can announce today that by 2012 all sports colleges in the UK will have the chance of a formal link with a school in the developing world, helping train sports teachers and encouraging millions more in the rest of the world to play sport and in doing so to raise aspirations, improve health and educational attainment. So, on days like today, I can look around me and I can sense the wonder, the beauty, the simplicity of sport and all the possibilities and potential it holds for young people in the years to come. A large part of the race ahead is still to be run, but I believe by your efforts and by your enthusiasm, your dynamism and by your achievements, we’ve got off to a great start. Thank you for everything that you’ve achieved. We look forward, all of us, to working together to make for a better future. Thank you all very much.
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