Dan Tree was a distracted figure in the staff room of Park House School and Sports College in Newbury.

Part of the reason was the impending first XI football match against local rivals St Bartholomew's - but most of the reason was the fear that six years of his efforts to improve and increase the sporting experience of hundreds of youngsters in the area have been critically undermined by the Government's spending cuts.

As well as being a PE teacher, Tree works on behalf of the Youth Sport Trust two days a week to develop one of the 450 School Sport Partnerships it has established since being set up as an independent charity in 1994.

These sporting networks, each with a specialist sports school or college at their centre, now include every state school in England. The statistics would appear to speak for themselves.

In the late 90s, many schools did not offer any hours at all for PE. By 2004, 23 per cent of state schools offered at least two hours per week, the previous Government's minimum target. This year that figure has risen to more than 90 per cent. Within the last three years, a million more pupils have been introduced to competitive sport.

Since 1995, the Government's annual investment in school sport has risen from zero to £160 million ($251 million). Now, the decision by Education Secretary Michael Gove to remove ring-fenced funding from School Sport Partnerships - which he describes as "neither affordable nor likely to be the best way to help schools achieve their potential in improving competitive sport" - will effectively reduce sport funding to zero again.

It's a prospect that dismays Tree - and no doubt those who perform the same function as he does all over the country.

"I co-ordinate sporting opportunities in the Newbury area for five primary schools, a special school and our school," he said. "Having two days a week off my teaching timetable enables me to establish more sporting opportunities and contacts for the children. I can set up competitions. I can bring specialist coaches into schools. I can establish links between the schools and local clubs.

"I'm now worried that all I've worked for over the past six years is going to be whittled down to nothing.

"The legacy of London 2012 cannot be achieved if you are downgrading the value of sport by doing this. This will affect what has been one of the most successful aspects of school life recently. A lot of money has been put into it, but it has also been showing results.

"I see it at ground level. There is no doubt that more of the children in this area are now involving themselves in sport and sporting competition, with all the broader benefits that brings.

"My head teacher values highly the work I am doing, and I'm sure he will try to accommodate it in the future. But he can't pluck money out of thin air so nothing is certain."

Tree's dismay is shared by Steve Grainger (pictured centre), the Youth Sport Trust's chief executive, who was one of the founding members along with John Beckwith and Olympic swimming gold medallist Duncan Goodhew.



"We know public funding is tight," he said. "But to cut down the level of funding from £160 million to zero, 21 months before the 2012 London Olympics, is astonishing.

"Using the Games to transform sporting opportunities for young people was one of the key messages Lord Coe used when London secured the Games in 2005.

"Now I think the International Olympic Committee should be asking questions about how that pledge is to be delivered if we are not going to be fulfilling the promise that was made.

"Of course, we started our work before the 2012 Games were awarded. But one of main ideas behind the Olympic bid was to use the inspiration of a home Games to drive up sporting participation by the nation's youth.

"I can imagine a hugely successful Games being staged in 2012, with great facilities, lots of home medallists and great TV coverage. Then, come September, our children are going to be returning to school, inspired by London 2012 to play sport, or to take up new sports they have just seen.

"So what is going to happen to the child who wants to take up handball because he loved it at the Olympics? There will be no one there able to help him.

"It's like Coca Cola mounting a big campaign for a new product, but not having any cans available for sale."

Grainger believes the effects of the cuts may be mitigated in some schools, but that they will adversely affect children in problematic urban locations.

"In some areas of the country where there is a strong community involvement you may see competitions and schemes carrying on," he said. "But that will not be the case in some of the tougher areas, where there isn't that social cohesion. It is the young people in these areas that are likely to suffer the most from these cuts.

"Most PE teachers now are doing as much if not more than they were during the '70s and '80s. It's those who teach other subjects who aren't involved in sports any more.

"When I was at school at a comprehensive in the north-east my athletics teacher was a maths teacher, my rugby teacher was a French teacher and my cricket teacher was a history teacher.

"But teachers nowadays have got far more time pressure on them delivering to set guidelines.

"And after the educational reforms in the late 80s, where teachers were tied in to set hours, the culture has changed. The old arrangement is not going to come back."

While the politicians make their calculations – both economical and political - one of those charged with delivering on the promises made by other politicians is, patently, distressed.

"I am not concerned for myself," Tree said. "My concern is the impact this is going to have on young people. I am absolutely gutted for them."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames