Daniel Forman considers the wider health and social importance of efforts to revive grassroots sports

The government is now taking a closer interest in encouraging competitive sports for an unusual combination of reasons. At the same time as being inspired by Great Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic success in Athens, concern is growing that at the other end of the scale inactivity is threatening an obesity crisis.

The result is to be an injection of funds into grassroots sport and a significant emphasis on the subject in Labour’s manifesto for a third term in power. Schools will be the primary target with culture, media and sport secretary Tessa Jowell confident of securing a commitment to a massive expansion of specialist coaching.

The Cabinet minister wants to see qualified instructors using lunchtime and after-school slots to improve standards and encourage participation, marking a shift in policy away from what she describes as the “politically correct nonsense of the ‘80s that competition damages children”. As a result, Labour could make a manifesto pledge to increase the two hours per week of “high-quality” sports training target by 2006, although education secretary Charles Clarke is understood to be keen to ensure no new timetable burdens on are imposed on headteachers.

“I am wholeheartedly behind more competitive sports for children and I want to see competition between schools,” Jowell argued in August. “You only have to look at what young children do in the playground to see that they thrive on competition.”

“What competing in sport in childhood does is to teach children how to win and lose – which is not only good for them when they’re at school but stands them in good stead for the rest of their lives,” she added. “But what is also important is that the more children who play sport, and the more sports they play, the more likely it is they’re going to discover a talent.”

The rules are also being tightened on the sale of school playing fields, the biggest single criticism of government policy on sport. Clarke announced during the Athens games that existing Labour legislation would be strengthened so that any excess land that is sold by a local authority not only has to have the education department’s permission but also ensures that proceeds go towards improving outdoor facilities such as floodlights, rather than being invested in indoor halls or gyms. Councils will also have to prove that they have exhausted all other options for raising revenue and that new facilities will last for at least 10 years, before the secretary of state will grant approval for a sale.

Around £500 million per year will be required to fund the PE teachers, coaching programmes and leagues both between and within schools that ministers now want. During Labour’s party conference in September Jowell also announced that the government would match the £45 million being given to the grassroots Football Foundation by the FA and Premiership.

But with frightening projections of the multi-billion pharmaceutical, care and economic costs of a public health crisis coming from government advisers such as Derek Wanless, investment in exercise is no longer being seen in Whitehall as a luxury add-on to departmental spending, but an absolute necessity.

As London’s bid to bring the 2012 Olympics to Britain gathers pace, investment in elite sport is also being stepped up. Ministers want to spread the social net of success, in part recognising that many national medals have come in events traditionally seen as upper class pursuits such as rowing, sailing and show jumping.

Supporting talent once it is discovered is also to become a priority. At the Labour conference new grants of up to £10,000 per year for promising athletes as young as 11 were unveiled. Jowell said the scholarship programme would “ensure that talent, too much of which now falls by the wayside through lack of the means to develop it, will be rewarded”.

The money will allow young stars to “go anywhere in the world” to receive world class training, physiotherapy and nutritional advice, recognising the “very great costs of developing talent”. Through the existing Talented Athletes Scholarship Scheme, the grants will be targeted towards less well off children so that family background “is no barrier to getting to the very top”.

It will be difficult to judge whether this two-pronged approach – targeting grassroots and elite sport development – has been successful until the 2012 Olympics at the earliest. But those Games – whether they are held in London, Paris, Madrid or elsewhere – could have wider implications and greater benefits than just the potential boost to national pride. Inspiring more young people, talented or not, to exercise is the greater goal if the obesity epidemic is to be beaten.

Click here for more articles in this series.