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Children should be taught “physical literacy” in the same way they learn to read and write if the gold medal successes of athletes such as Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson are to translate into more people getting active, the head of the body tasked with increasing sporting uptake in England has said.
Tim Hollingsworth, CEO of Sport England, told the Guardian that an “easy narrative” had developed around the London 2012 Olympics that elite success would ensure greater participation, but that encouraging people – especially women and minority ethnic communities – to take up and continue in sport had proved more complex.
Great Britain has been celebrating a triumphant athletics World Championships in Doha, where Asher-Smith stormed to gold in the 200m and silver in the 100m – the first British woman to take a sprint gold in 36 years – and Johnson-Thompson secured an emphatic and long-awaited victory in the heptathlon.
But Hollingsworth said while the wave of feelgood enthusiasm that followed such victories was “brilliant at raising the profile of what is available and is doable” within organised sport, when it came to greater participation more broadly what mattered was “making people feel that getting active is actually right for them. For some people that will be going into and sustaining sport, and for others it will be just about building activity into their lives.”
Sport England and other sporting bodies have grappled with the challenge of turning around consistently low levels of physical activity, particularly among young girls. In research published last year the quango – which allocates £300m of funding to grassroots sport each year – found that just 17% of children and young people met government targets for daily activity, with boys (20%) more active than girls (14%). Studies consistently show a drop-off for girls in particular when they hit their teenage years.
By physical literacy, Hollingsworth said he meant “the core skills that enable people to enjoy activity, to feel confident being active, and to feel they could take on particular shifts. So the ABC could be agility, balance and coordination.”
Ed Warner, a former chairman of UK Athletics, the sport’s governing body, said he expected Asher-Smith and Johnson-Thompson’s success to lead to a “sugar rush” of enthusiasm for athletics, but that there would inevitably be a drop-off as interest waned.
Warner said: “There’s real evidence in previous times that inspirational performances by top sports people do lead to queues of kids wanting to join their local athletics, swimming or cycling clubs. When they see scintillating performances, they turn to their parents and say: ‘I want to try that.’
“The challenge for sporting organisations is to harness that, to keep kids engaged – because it is not an overnight enterprise. What you want is for people to be inspired, give it a go, but not expect instant success, because they will only be disappointed.”
When it came to inspiring girls to take part, he said, athletics had the advantages of being “a 50:50 sport – half the medals on offer are for men, half are for women,” and a social leveller.
He said: “Being a good footballer is in the eye of the beholder. In athletics it is about how fast can you run, how high can you throw, how long can you jump? If you come from any background, if you have the determination to succeed, you could be Katarina, you could be Dina.”
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