Dame Kelly Holmes in the North East and East Midlands to help celebrate National School Sport Week

Tuesday 1st July, 2008

Dame Kelly Holmes will be in the North East of England and the East Midlands on Tuesday July 1st to help celebrate the first ever National School Sport Week.

Dame Kelly will travel to Tyne and Wear and then onto Lincolnshire as she continues her week-long tour of the country, in her role of National School Sport Champion, to see how schools are inspiring young people through the national PE and Sport Strategy for Young People.

National School Sport Week, a government initiative managed by the Youth Sport Trust and supported by Norwich Union, will aim to engage up to 3 million children across the country in a week of focused PE and school sport activity from Monday June 30th to Friday July 4th.

Each day will focus on a different theme and on Tuesday Kelly will be at Whickham School and Sports College, in Tyne and Wear, to see how more young people are being encouraged to become sports leaders and volunteers.

Since 2002, the Step into Sport programme, which is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has been supporting young people to become active leaders and volunteers.

Whickham Sports College will stage a “Leading the Way in Sport” festival, for 800 young people from ten local schools and the 20,000th young person to become a Step into Sport Volunteer nationally will be celebrated.

From there, Kelly will travel to The Parks Sports Centre, in North Shields, for the “North Tyneside Festival of Sport 2008”, which will see around 600 young people from 20 schools taking part in a range of sports from badminton and basketball to judo and gymnastics. National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) have embraced National School Sport Week and a number of NGBs have joined forces with organisers of the “North Tyneside Festival of Sport 2008” to give the youngsters a taste of different sports as participants, leaders and volunteers.

Kelly’s last visit of the day will be to the South West Lincolnshire School Games at Grantham Meres Leisure Centre, in Grantham, which has been organised by young leaders and will involve over 450 competitors from 37 schools.

Chief Executive of the Youth Sport Trust, Steve Grainger said: “The Youth Sport Trust is working hard with schools across England in striving to improve opportunities for pupils to access all kinds of different sports, as we work towards giving all young people access to five hours of high quality PE and sport by 2012. The new National School Sport Week is a great opportunity to celebrate all the great work already taking place and set the bar even higher as we look to re-invigorate inter and intra-school competition for thousands more youngsters.”

Through their partnership with the Youth Sport Trust and a variety of UK Athletics schemes, Norwich Union has been backing British sport from playground to podium since 1999.  Mark Hodges, Chief Executive of Norwich Union Life, explains:

“We believe that the National School Sport Week is a positive sign of change in the development of youth activity in Britain. Through our work with Kelly Holmes and the Youth Sport Trust, Norwich Union is committed to preparing future champions and making it easier for the nation to get involved in sport at all levels.”

The National School Sport Week will be shaped by schools and pupils themselves, who have been set the task of coming up with the most innovative activity during the week. Activity will focus around the following key themes:

Celebrate – everything that has been achieved in PE and school sport over the last year, including the rise in numbers of young people participating, the range of young talented sports performers coming through from school-level and the contribution made by young leaders and volunteers to school sport and to helping younger pupils achieve their potential.

Develop - National School Sport Week is an opportunity for new initiatives and developments in PE and school sport to be launched in schools. This summer we will see new and innovative developments in schools delivering more intra school competition as well as the launch of the national network of Competition Managers who are rejuvenating inter-school competition.

Profile – the week will provide an opportunity for schools to raise awareness of all the fantastic work taking place in PE and school sport both nationally and at a local level.

The week will include such activities as:

• Festivals of Sport (including TOP Sportsability festivals, multi-skill and multi-sport festivals). Young Leaders have been trained through TOP Link (within the Step into Sport leadership programme) to plan and run these festivals for primary aged young people.
• Intra school competition – led by School Sport Co-ordinators and supported by young leaders
• Inter school competition – led by Competition Managers and supported by the school sport network
• Local activity – innovative and creative ideas organised at a local level