Official Statistics

School Games Indicator 2014/15

Updated 22 October 2015

1. Introduction

1.1 This Report

This statistical release presents the cost per participant of the School Games. More specifically, it derives the average public sector cost per eligible student at schools participating in the School Games for the 2014/15 academic year. This measure was initially developed as an input indicator to measure the performance of the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). Changes to the indicators provide an opportunity to review the content of this publication. See the Developments section at the end of this document for further details.

This release looks at schools participating in the School Games, the number of students at these schools as well as the public sector finances allocated to the School Games.

1.2 School Games

The School Games were established in 2011 and are a competition over four levels for school children aged 5 to under 19. The School Games are designed to build on the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and enable every school and child to participate in competitive sport, including opportunities for disabled youngsters. The four levels are:

• Level 1 – sporting competition for all students through intra-school competition.

• Level 2 – individuals and teams are selected to represent their schools in local inter-school competitions.

• Level 3 – the county/area will stage multi-sport School Games festivals as a culmination of year-round school sport competition.

• Level 4 – the School Games finals: a national multi-sport event where the most talented young people in the UK are selected to compete.

Levels 1 to 3 are open to all schools in England, whilst level 4 is a UK wide event.

Nationally and locally the School Games are being delivered through partnerships. The national partnership is made up of:

• The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) who have overall policy leadership supported by the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department of Health (DH).

• Sport England who are the Lottery distributor and are supporting the engagement of National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) and County Sports Partnerships.

• The British Paralympic Association brings the vision and inspiration of the Paralympics and supports the role of the games in providing disability sport opportunities across the country.

• The Youth Sport Trust who were commissioned by Sport England to provide development support to schools, sports and other local partners.

1.3 Forthcoming Releases

The next release, scheduled for September 2016, will present the annual estimates for 2015/16. This release will reflect changes proposed in Developments and any feedback received on these.

2. The School Games – 2014/15

2.1 Key Findings

• In the year to August 31st 2015, 19,511 schools with 8.36 million eligible students, had participated^{[footnote 2]} in the School Games.

• In 2014/15 £21.6 million of public funding allocated to the School Games.

• This equates to an average public sector cost of £2.58 per eligible student at schools participating in the School Games in 2014/15.

2.2 Full explanation and commentary

Participation

Participation in the School Games cannot be directly measured at a student level – only the number of schools which had participated can be estimated from those that have registered. However, the School Games are designed so schools can provide opportunities to all their students. Therefore a reasonable proxy for the level of student participation is to include all eligible students at participating schools. This is the approach taken in this release.

Participating Schools

The School Games launched to all schools in England in the 2011/12 academic year and have continued in 2014/15.

For the purposes of this release, participating schools are defined as those registered on the School Games database^{[footnote 25]} by the 31st August 2015. As schools do not need to re-register to participate in the School Games in the years following their initial registration, this includes schools who registered for the School Games since 2011/12. However, while schools remain eligible to participate in the School Games after their initial registration, some schools may close or re-open in a new form, for example as an academy, or be amalgamated into other schools.

In order to avoid counting schools that were no longer open, schools that closed before September 2014 (i.e. those which were not open at any point during the 2014/15 academic year) have not been counted as participating. Additionally, the predecessors of schools that had re-opened as academies, or had been amalgamated into other schools and re-registered for the School Games in their new form have been excluded to avoid double-counting their students. Annex A provides a schematic overview of the decision for the inclusion and exclusion of schools.

In the year to August 2015, 19,511 schools had registered for the School Games and therefore counted as participating on the basis of this methodology. Four schools closed in this academic year. Other schools may be listed on the database as the School Games database includes schools which have signed up after the end of the 2014/15 school year.

Eligible Students at Participating Schools

EduBase is a database of educational establishments across England and Wales maintained by the Department for Education (DfE). Where available, EduBase records the number of pupils registered at establishments from the School Census. It also records the capacity of educational establishments.

To obtain the number of eligible students, schools which had participated in the School Games were matched to data on student numbers from EduBase. In line with the methodology described in the Participating Schools section of this release, schools that closed before September 2013 were not included in the analysis.

For schools where the number of students was not available or was zero in the EduBase data, school capacity was available to use as a proxy in 196 cases. This is a reasonable approximation as the median occupancy of school places where data are available is 98%. Additional data from “Local Authority Tables by Provider by Funding Stream, Learner and Learning Characteristics”^{[footnote 3]} gave student numbers for 125 further education establishments, such as sixth form colleges, taking just those students aged below 19. This left 21 schools reporting zero students in the final dataset, out of an overall 17,800 schools that were counted as participating based on the criteria outlined in Annex A. Table 1 summarises which data sources were used and for how many schools.

Table 1: Data source used to obtain the number of students at schools signed up for the School Games as of July 31st 2014

Data Source	Number of Schools	Number of Studentsb
EduBase School Census	19,012	7,280,000
EduBase School Capacity	323	128,000
FE and Skills Participation	164	950,000
Ofsted Report	1	-c
Nonea	11	0
Total	19,511	8,358,087

^{Notes
a   Number of students data not available
b   Rounded to the nearest thousand
c   Number not shown as it is less than a thousand}

Public Sector Cost

Public sector funding for the School Games has come from the Lottery through Sport England (SE); and from the Exchequer through Sport England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Health (DH). In the 2013/14 financial year £21.95 million of public sector funding was allocated to the School Games, with a full breakdown of the funding given in Table 2 below.

Table 2: School Games funding by year and source

Funding Line	Source	2010/11	2011/12	2012/13	2013/14	2014/15	2015/16P
Sport England Lottery Levels 1-4	Lottery	£1.2m	£7.8m	£6.2m	£10m	£10m	£5.5m
DHa	Exchequer	-c	£2.5m	£7.0m	£7.0m	£7.0m	£7.0m
Sport England/DCMSa	Exchequer	-	£4.0m	£4.0m	£4.0m	£4.0m	£4.0m
DfE PE Teacher Releaseb	Exchequer	-	£32.5m	£32.5m	-	-	-
DfE Disability/ Volunteer	Exchequer	-	£4.0m	£1.3m	£0.95m	£0.49m	TBA
Talented Athlete Exchange Programmee	Exchequer	-	-	£0.02m	£0.1m	£0.07m	£0.09m
Total	Lottery & Exchequer	£1.2m	£50.8m	£51.0m	£22.1m	£21.6m	£16.5m

^{Notes
a   School Games organiser
b   While this funding is not specifically for School Games, it supports delivery of the programme
c   Inidcates no funding
d   To Be Announced/Decision Pending
e   The Talented Athlete Exchange Programme has been omitted from previous editions, and therefore the funding has been added retrospectively
P   Provisional}

Level 4 of the School Games, the national competition, is not school-based. The National Governing Bodies of Sport select participants for the one off event. However, the cost is included as the measure presented in this release considers the total School Games package.

Public Sector Cost per Eligible Student Participating

Dividing the public sector cost by the number of eligible students at participating schools gives the final measure. It should be noted that the time periods do not match exactly, with the cost in financial years and the number of students taken after the end of the academic year (up to 31st July, which is in the following financial year). However, it is not possible to adjust the cost to an academic year basis.

In the year to 31st August 2015, 19,511 schools, with 8.36 million eligible students had participated^{[footnote 4]} in the School Games. In 2014/15 there was £21.6m of public funding allocated for the School Games. This equates to an average public sector cost of £2.58 per eligible student at schools participating in the School Games.

Changes Over Time

The average public sector cost of the School Games per eligible pupil was lower in 2014/15 (£2.58) than 2013/14 (£3.12^{[footnote 45]}). Table 3 shows the breakdown for each year since 2011/12.

Table 3: Average public sector cost per eligible student at schools participating in the School Games, 2011/12 – 2013/14

	Number of schools signed up to the School Games Database	Number of eligible students (m)	Public funding (£m)	Average public sector cost per eligible student at schools participating in the School Games (£)
2011/12	8,341	3.85	50.8	13.20
2012/13	13,561	5.41	51.0	9.43
2013/14	17,800	7.09	22.1a	3.12b
2014/15	19,511	8.36	21.6	2.58

^{Notes
a   Decrease is largely due to the end of the two year DfE PE Teacher Release funding.
b   The public funding and Average public sector cost per eligible student have been amended to include the Talented Athlete Exchange Programme.}

To note: the figures in this and the previous years’ releases are not directly comparable to those of 2011/12. The differences are outlined below:

To note: the figures in this and the previous years’ releases are not directly comparable to those of 2011/12. The differences are outlined below:

• Schools that had initially signed up for the School Games prior to January 2012 were required to re-register on a new database to activate their account. The 2011/12 figures therefore related to the number of schools that had signed up between January and August 2012. It may be that some schools had signed up on the initial database, but not re-registered on the new database and would therefore not be counted in the 2011/12 indicator despite their participation.

• For the 2012/13 indicator the methodology was developed to exclude schools which had closed since September 2012 if a new manifestation or amalgamation of the same school had signed up to the School Games. Only 8 schools were excluded for this reason in 2012/13. In 2013/14 and 2014/15, no such schools were signed up to School Games.

• 2013/14 figures relate to the number of schools that had signed up since January 2012 and up until 31st July 2014 but with schools which had closed prior to September 2013 removed. No schools were removed in the 2011/12 indicator as they all would have been open at some point in the time period in question.

2.3 Developments

The School Games Indicator has been running since 2011/12 as a departmental indicator for DCMS. This publication is no longer intended to be used as a departmental indicator, therefore we are taking the opportunity to review the content of this publication for the 2015/16 release in September 2016.

It is intended that the publication will continue to include the number of schools signed up for the School Games, an estimate of the number of eligible pupils and the total lottery and exchequer funding for the games.

We are not aware of user requirements for the public sector cost per eligible student estimate, therefore it is proposed future publications will not include this figure.

In addition to the changes described above, DCMS will also look at the potential for further analyses of the data, for example, information by type of school. An experimental release of this additional breakdown will be published at 9:30am on 22 October 2015.

DCMS welcomes feedback on these proposals. Please contact evidence@culture.gov.uk with any responses by 24 November 2015.

3. Annex A: Decision Tree for School Inclusion/Exclusion

4. Annex B: Background Note

1. School Games is an Official Statistic and as such has been produced to the professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Official Statistics undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure they meet customer needs and are produced free from any political interference. For more information, see the Code of Practice

2. This report has been produced by Becky Woods and Niall Goulding. Acknowledgement goes to colleagues within DCMS, Sport England and Department for Education for their assistance with the production and quality assurance of this release.

3. The responsible statistician for this release is Becky Woods. For enquiries on this release, please contact Becky Woods on 0207 211 6134 or email evidence@culture.gov.uk.

4. Next Release: The next release, scheduled for September 2016, will present the annual estimates for 2015/16.

5. For general enquiries, telephone: 0207 211 6200
   
   Department for Culture Media and Sport
   4th Floor, 100 Parliament Street
   London
   SW1A 2BQ
   enquiries@culture.gov.uk

1. Defined as schools registered on the latest database and not ruled out from participating due to closure; see Participating Schools section and Annex A for more detail. ↩

2. Data provided by the Youth Sport Trust. ↩

3. FE data library: local authority tables ↩

4. As defined in the Participating Schools section ↩

5. The 2013/14 estimate has been revised since the previous publication. The previous estimate was £3.10. It has increased to £3.12 due to the addition of the Talented Athlete Exchange Programme finance being included in the data. The 2013/14 figure was calculated based on 17,800 schools which had signed up, 7.09 million eligible students and £22.1 million of public funding. ↩