I say chaps, there's a hell of a punch-up going on in the playground. That nasty school bully Michael Gove has taken the ball away and won't let the other kids play with it.

At least, that's what many teachers are saying. They are also suggesting there'll be no legacy left for the class of 2012 when the Olympics are done and dusted, and that we'll end up in the next decade with a generation Billy Bunters rather than Tom Daleys.

It is all very vexing. Why has the Education Secretary - who certainly doesn't looks the sort the sporty type - put the boot in to the schools sports programme by no longer ring-fencing the Exchequer's contribution? That's the £162 million question.

"We can't let Gove kill school sport," screamed one columnist this week while another called for pupils - and teachers - to start a resistance movement, presumably by marching on Downing Street. As if we hadn't had enough of student demos protesting against Coalition cuts.

Actually, the funding has not been cut, just radically re-arranged by Gove who wants head teachers to decide for themselves how the money should be allocated. It will be up to them to choose whether to continue to use it to bring in sports coaches or improve sports facilities. Or channel it elsewhere.

The Government's action, we are told, is not simply to save money but because it believes there is insufficient competitive sport in schools. So to this end they are to introduce a "Schools Olympics" (though because of IOC regulations they may have to call it something else) which will supplant the present UK School Games.

And there's the rub. The UK School Games were the baby of the last administration and have been orchestrated by the Youth Sports Trust, who look set to be the big losers in all this as it seems to challenge their raison d'etre.

For effectively what Gove is doing is emasculating the YST, who act as middle man in the distribution of funds. Instead the money will go directly to the schools thus avoiding a slab of administrative costs.

A casualty will be the Schools Partnership programme across 450 schools which employs several thousand coaches and games organisers, most I'm told on upwards of £40,000 a year who run PE classes where there are no trained staff, and co-ordinate competitions and events. Will they - and the YST - become redundant?

There is a feeling that the present Government view the YST as a left-leaning quango chaired, as is UK Sport, by Baroness Sue Campbell, know to have Labour sympathies though she sits as a cross bencher in the House of Lords.

The hit on the YST is rather ironic as it was under the Labour administration (and no political axe grinding here as I voted for them) that the Panathlon, a brilliant and popular event designed largely for inner city schools where sports facilities were sparse, was ruthlessly kicked into touch for political expediency with the advent of the UK Games, all the quangos, UK Sport, Sport England and the YST, declining the relatively meagre financial assistance that would have kept it alive.



It has been suggested to me that Gove has acted out of political spite. This I doubt. The Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, who has shown himself to be a fair-minded chap and who Gove surely consulted, would not be party to anything like that.

I find myself torn on the issue. While I understand why some teachers are getting hot under their mortar boards I also see no reason why sport, whether at schools, community or elite level, should be exempt from the cost-cutting needed to get the economy up and running again. We are all in this together, having to bite the same bullet.

It should also be noted that not every head teacher in the land is spitting blood over Gove's Armageddon. There have been several supportive letters in the broadsheets, one of particular interest from the former head of Barking Abbey School - a dedicated sports college not that far from London's Olympic heartland - claiming that only 25 per cent, or less, of young people are doing competitive sport now despite the heavy investment of the previous Government, and that "most schools don't do any competitive sport".

I also hear of situations where pupils have been steered away from mainstream competitive sport and encouraged to pursue activities like street dancing and cheerleading, which presumably come out of the "ring-fenced" sports cash.

This is a debate which will not go away. The boxing gold medallist from Beijing, James DeGale, is the latest of 75 Olympians to put their names to a letter requesting a meeting with David Cameron to try and get the funding restored in its original form. "How can they even contemplate cutting sport," he asks. "It's baffling. If there had been more sport at my school I'd probably have stayed on and studied a bit more."

You could argue that DeGale hasn't done too badly for someone who came from a school with limited sports resources.

And now we even have Canada's Olympics chief putting in his two cents' worth. M Jean Dupre has written to Gove taking a swipe at the planned cuts. His interest stems from Canada planning to use the Langdon Park sports school in Tower Hamlets as a training base in 2012. The head there, Chris Dunne, is among Gove's strong critics.

Actually, I would have thought M Dupre would be better occupied finding ways to improve his own country's sports structure – 19th place in the Beijing Olympics medal table, finishing beneath such luminaries as Belarus and Romania is hardly inspirational.

Interestingly, I have received a communication from an organisation called Compass, the trade body recently formed to improve standards in the delivery of coaching in schools at no cost, they say, to the public purse.

They argue thus:"Gove's change in policy could even (ironically) lead to increased expenditure on frontline delivery, directly to children.

In times where every pound counts, the opportunities to gain efficiencies and more diverse provision should be embraced and not derided.

By re-allocating funding directly to schools, Michael Gove has acted decisively to create a new free market economy, which will allow each school the opportunity to get the best value for their money and make the right choice for their students.

What now needs to happen is that all physical education and sport staff, whatever their employer or sector, who are genuinely passionate about improving physical education and increasing participation in sport and physical activity, find innovative ways to contribute so this 'controversial' policy decision by the Coalition Government could provide the taxpayer with value for money - and the country's children with increased and more varied opportunities to enjoy the benefits of sport and physical activity.

So you pays your £162 million and you takes your choice.

As I say, a vexing issue and one that will not go away until and unless Gove does a U-turn and gives the ball back. But he is a Tory, not a Lib Dem, so Government sources say such back-tracking won't happen.

But I would not be surprised should he eventually be persuaded by the Prime Minister and Sports Minister, who clearly have taken note of the protests, to offer some sort of compromise, perhaps by allowing the ring-fencing of part of the funding.

Bully for him, if he does.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.