Exclusive: School Olympics to be launched next month by Government

By David Owen

November 12 - The British Government plans to launch its new Olympic-style school sports competition next month in the fast-developing Olympic Park in East London.

The timetable emerged in the detail of a four-year Department for Culture, Media and Sport business plan published this week.

This is said to set out Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's "vision" for culture, media sport and tourism for the next four years.
Such plans have been published by all government departments across Whitehall.

The plans also indicate that Sport England will be tasked with appointing "delivery bodies" for county-level competitions and the national competition between January and May next year.

The finalised framework and rules for each level of competition would be published next September.

Currently there is much uncertainty about how the Coalition Government's new competition will differ from the UK School Games launched in 2006 under Labour by the Youth Sport Trust, a sports charity.

Aimed at providing elite young athletes with experience of a high-profile competition with "an athletes' village and opening and closing ceremonies to replicate the Olympics and Paralympics or Commonwealth Games", these UK School Games are set to continue until next year.

Jat Sahota, head of sponsorship at Sainsbury's, the supermarket chain that is headline sponsor of the UK School Games as well as official partner of the 2012 Paralympics, recently had this to say about the proposed new competition in an exclusive interview with insidethegames.

"Until it is clearer what it is and what it is called and who's running it and how it's being funded, other than a general sense of, 'Yes we'd like to be involved because of our commitment through Active Kids and our history in the UK School Games', then I can't commit to an amorphous entity," he said.

Sahota added: "That said I think it's pretty clear the Government have expressed their desire for such an event to take place."

He said that if such an event was "on the model of the UK School Games, we would certainly wish to be involved...

"We believe that an all-inclusive peak event for schools for sport is important."

Read the full interview here.

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