The government will scrap the £320m a year fund paid directly to primary schools for PE and sport and replace it with a sport partnerships network worth £193m annually for primary and secondary schools. The new scheme is due to be fully up and running from spring 2027, in a shift that will affect more than 3 million secondary students as well as 4.5 million primary pupils.
The Department for Education said the change would open up sport to every child, regardless of background, ability or school, but the numbers point to a sharp squeeze on day-to-day funding. On the department's own figures, the move amounts to a 40% cut in annual operational support, even after the government added nearly £200m in capital funding for sports facilities and promised a one-off £100m transition payment for primary schools in spring 2027.
The PE and sports premium was designed to lock in the legacy of the 2012 London Olympics, when ministers promised school sport would be part of the event's long afterglow. School sport funding has already been reworked several times over the past 20 years. A previous Labour-era national sports network created 450 school sport coordinator roles, but that funding was later scrapped by the coalition government in 2010. After the Olympics, the coalition launched a £150m a year grant paid directly to primary schools.
Bridget Phillipson said the new approach would see every child, in both primary and secondary school, become more physically active no matter their circumstances, background, ability or where they go to school. But the teaching unions and school leaders who have watched successive funding models come and go say the latest version is harder to read and may leave schools with less money in practice.
Pepe Di’Iasio said he was worried about the removal of an established funding stream for primary schools and its replacement with something extremely complex that lacks clarity about how it will be delivered. He said it looked like a funding cut dressed up as an initiative to boost PE and sport in schools, and warned it may have the opposite effect, especially in primaries. Leora Cruddas said a national programme could work in principle, but urged ministers to delay implementation until September 2027 so the sector could plan properly. She added that schools also needed to understand how support would be extended to 3.6 million secondary pupils at what appears to be significantly reduced annual funding.
The friction in this plan is plain. Earlier this year the Department of Health and Social Care wanted to end its £60m annual contribution to school sports, and it later emerged that the Department for Education also wanted to cut £60m from its side. Against that backdrop, the new network looks less like a fresh expansion than a reset built on less money and more complexity, even as ministers argue it will widen access.
Simon Hayes said the separate capital spending, including investment in facilities, could bring lasting benefits by improving the places where children and young people get active and enjoy sport, while helping to tackle inequalities in access to physical activity. That may help on pitches, courts and changing rooms. It does not answer the central question for schools planning next year's budgets: whether a system that reaches more pupils can do so with less annual cash than the one it is replacing.
