Youth Sport and Evidence-Based Policy in England: The Case of School Sport Partnerships and School

Games

Andy Smith

Objectives• Examine the politics and policy of youth

sport in England

• Case study: School Sport Partnerships (SSPs) and School Games

• Coalition youth sport policy: evidence-based policy and policy-based evidence

• Explore the largely rhetorical commitment to youth sport policy

• The future of youth sport policy: ‘policy taking’ from non-sport coalitions and agendas?

Context: SSPs and School Games• October 2010: Funding for 450 School Sport

Partnerships withdrawn

• Investment of £2 billion since 2002 replaced by £126 million for the School Games

• Highly politicized decision generating an unusual and rare debate on sport policy

• Minsters of Sport on the margins of policy-making and ‘Secretaries of State have to take decisions on sports policy, while knowing little about it’ (McMaster and Bairner, 2012: 224)

The School Games• Four levels of activity (YST, 2012):

• (1) Competition in schools• (2) Competition between schools• (3) Competition at county/area level • (4) Competition at national Sainsbury’s

School Games final in Olympic stadium

• Introduction of School Games Kitemark: politically important indicator of competition

• Breaking up a national school-based sporting infrastructure?

Assumptions• Youth sport participation is ‘in crisis’

• Prioritizing competitive (team) sport: ideology of competitive individualism, elite success and talent identification priorities

• School Games: solve ‘patchy school sports provision’ (Hunt, 2012)

• A decentralized and locally-determined approach to delivery bolstered by satellite clubs in secondary schools

• Hunt: ‘School sport and youth sport will be one and the same thing’ (BBC Sport, 2012)

A Decline in Competitive School Sport?

• Assembled evidence that supports ‘politically favoured and pre-established policy lines’ (Pawson, 2006: 7)

Rejecting Inconvenient Evidence• Participation: small decline recently but substantial

generational increase (Green, 2011)

• Emphasis on competition is inconsistent with prevailing trends in participation

• Increased preference for more individualized, less competitive, flexible activity (Coalter, 2012; Green et al., 2005; Smith, 2006; Smith et al., 2004)

• SSPs: increased competition in traditional sports and broadened range of activities (Bloyce and Smith, 2010; Houlihan and Lindsey, 2012)

School Games

Policy-Based, Spray-On Evidence• Ideological commitment to competitive

sport and other agendas: anathema to evidence-based policy

• Policy-based evidence policy recommendations made via the cherry-picking of evidence (Pawson, 2006)

• Spray-on evidence ‘employed to give veneer of scientific justification to policies that are embarked upon for entirely different reasons’ (Henderson, 2012: 53)

• Emphasis on policy take-offs, not landings (Smith and Leech, 2010; Weiss, 1993)

Youth Sport Policy and Practice• (1) more chances to participate in sport

and physical activity (especially competitive sport);

• (2) more coaches to facilitate opportunities to participate and to improve the quality of young people’s experiences of sport and physical activity;

• (3) a wider range of competitions in which young people can participate; and

• (4) a more extensive club infrastructure designed to develop and enhance links between participation in sport and local community clubs. (Bloyce and Smith, 2010)

Youth Sport Policy and Practice• Further splintering of youth sport as

‘crowded policy space’ (Houlihan, 2000)

• Increasing disconnection between youth sport and PESS: blurring of policy boundaries and generalization of policy interests

• Youth sport situated in schools but no longer controlled and shaped by them

• Increasing reticence of head teachers in an era of localism and austerity – sport costs!

• Youth sport linked to education but not defined by it and increased variability of practice (quantity and quality)?

Status of Youth Sport Policy• Evidence: a necessary but not sufficient condition for policy-

making

• Little evidence of strong political commitment to youth sport (Houlihan and Lindsey, 2012)

• Increasingly the remit of DCMS (not DfE)

• A vague, convenient, and largely symbolic association with London 2012

• Marginalized other policy goals and interests more explicitly associated with PE and school sport

The Politics of Policy-Taking• Evidence of a gradual trend towards ‘policy-taking’

from wider policy agendas?

• Sue Campbell and YST increasingly excluded in decision-making

• Political interest in, and salience of, youth sport stimulated largely by non-sport decision makers

• Role taken by a coalition of actors in broader, generally more powerful, policy sectors (e.g. education) (Ball, 2008, 2012; Houlihan & Lindsey, 2012)

The Politics of Policy Taking• Increasingly globalized and market-based

education system (Ball, 2008, 2012)

• Growth of commercialized services and personnel (e.g. sports coaches, SDOs)

• Trend towards decentralization associated with differential provision mediated by local contexts

• Youth sport policy also shaped by interests in other policy areas beyond education (e.g. sport, health, social inclusion, community safety) (Hoye et al., 2010)

Policy Actors and Responsibility• A policy vacuum – who is responsible for

policy development and implementation?

• Established network of individuals and organizations advocating for youth sport

• Youth sport lacking identifiable advocacy coalition (Houlihan and Lindsey, 2012)

• Post 2012: implications of decentralized school-based provision for youth sport?

• Maintaining youth sport policy salience: development through sport in the ‘Big Society’ (Houlihan and Lindsey, 2012)?

Conclusion• Youth sport remains a highly politicized

and vulnerable policy sector

• Policy: a misguided cure for a fictitious illness (Roberts, 1996)

• Many recent claims about youth sport are incoherent, contradictory, and grounded in ideological concerns

• Much youth sport policy is incoherent and based less on evidence and practical considerations than on politics and pure emotion

• Moving beyond participation: what impacts on young people’s experiences?