Written Question to the Department of Children, Schools and Families

19 May 2008
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what contribution his Department is making towards ensuring the 2012 Olympic Games delivers a lasting educational legacy; and if he will make a statement.

Jim Knight: The Department is working with an extensive range of external partners including the Government Olympic Executive, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills to ensure that the education benefits of the games are maximised.

We are developing detailed plans for a 2012 Education Programme of opportunities linked to the games which will support key policies and priorities, and in particular the five Every Child Matters outcomes and our commitments set out in the Children’s Plan. This programme will be launched in September 2008 and will run through to 2012, with projects coming on stream at different times as part of a strategy to maintain interest in the games over the four years up to 2012.

The involvement of educational institutions in the programme will be voluntary and the design of the programme is on the basis that opportunities for young people and institutions will be offered in a coherent way that supports and can be delivered alongside their existing work.

We anticipate that much of the activity will not be centrally driven but rather be planned and implemented locally within individual schools and communities and we are working with the nine English regions, through the 2012 Nations and Regions Group, to capture and share the large number of grass roots activities which we expect to take place in individual schools.



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