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LATEST FUNDING UPDATE REGARDING THE FUTURE

OF SCHOOL SPORT PARTNERSHIPS

Dear Colleague,

You will be aware that government funding for School Sport Partnerships is in place until 31 August 2011 and that final payments under these grants, which include the funding for School Sport Co-ordinators (SSCo), have now been made to the hub schools.

Last month arrangements were announced to fund a national network of School Games Organisers. Three day’s worth of funding towards the hosting of these posts, from the Department of Health and Sport England, has initially been offered to those schools that are currently hub sites for School Sport Partnerships. By now, you will have also received info rmation about the School Games, along with a prospectus and invitation for your school to sign up for this exciting new opportunity.

Earlier in this academic year the Secretary of State for Education announced his intention to provide funding to secondary schools to enable them to release a PE teacher for one day a week to ensure provision of specialist support to local primary schools. These PE teachers will encourage greater take up of competitive sport in primary schools and secure a local fixture network to increase the amount of intra- and inter-school competition.

After Easter you will receive formal notification of this scheme from the Department for Education (DfE), along with greater detail about the funding mechanism. In the interim, as we know many of you are eager to begin to make plans and to set timetabling arrangements for September, we thought you would be interested to know the latest position on this funding. Subject to ministerial clearance, the arrangements are likely to be, as follows:

• All state-maintained secondary schools and Academies, middle deemed secondary schools and special schools (including non-maintained special schools)/pupil referral units with secondary-age pupils are likely to receive this funding to enable them to release a PE teacher a day a week to undertake the functions described above.         
• Funding will be a fixed, flat rate grant of approximately half of what schools receive for an SSCo at present. There will be no additional payment for London weighting or ‘on costs’¹.
• Funding will be for two academic years only: September 2011–August 2012 and September 2012–August 2013. 
• Schools are free to add their own resources to the additional funding to increase the amount of time spent on this role or to increase the number of people undertaking the role.

We would reiterate again that this is subject to ministerial clearance, we understand that confirmation and further details will follow after Easter from DfE.

We hope that this info rmation is helpful and that it enables you to ensure a smooth transition to a new system while allowing the benefits of the current set-up to be embedded.

Please feel free to circulate this to your school contacts, as required. This message is being sent to all head teachers tomorrow. We look forward to working with you to continue to develop provision of school sport and to enable more young people to benefit from it.

¹ The formula funding grant for School Sport Co-ordinators is currently £15,300.