Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

David Conn

• Initiative aims to involve all school-age children in sports
• First of 3,000 planned clubs will open in the autumn

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Ben Bradshaw is to reveal plans for 3,000 new after-school sports clubs. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, will tomorrow announce £6m funding for 3,000 after-school sports clubs intended to be open across the UK by spring next year. The aim of the clubs, which will be funded by Bradshaw’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department of Health and Sport England, will be to involve all school-age children in sports regardless of their innate athletic ability.

With £3.38m of the funding coming from the DCMS, the initiative is being linked to the 2012 Olympics, paying for equipment and coaching in the Olympic sports of badminton, fencing, handball, table tennis and volleyball, and wheelchair sports basketball and boccia (similar to bowls) played at the Paralympics.

The DoH is contributing £1.5m of the overall funding package and the clubs will be run under the “Change 4 Life” banner, the DoH’s educational campaign to encourage children and adults to eat more healthily and be more physically active. The programme’s other £1m has been allocated by Sport England, whose lottery funding is now targeted to sports governing bodies rather than to encouraging general participation in physical activity… Continue reading