You can’t judge a school by its sports fields

There’s a glass case in the hall of Number 10 at the moment which contains a large sports bag with two shiny Olympic medals poking out. This wasn’t left behind by a Team GB athlete: it’s actually an enormous, elaborate cake, complete with icing zips. Downing Street staffers are looking forward to eating this part of the Olympic legacy soon. A considerably less tasty leftover from the Games is the row over school sports provision. During the Olympics, I argued that the Prime Minister’s interventions on the matter were largely unhelpful, but as Fraser and Matthew d’Ancona have pointed out, schools selling off old tennis courts to pay for new gyms, or a proliferation of Indian dancing classes will become more common under the freedoms they now enjoy. The key for politicians is to make it clear that it’s a good thing they aren’t in charge of what one school chooses to do with its sports provision.