Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee

Welcome back to our inquiry into participation in sport in disadvantaged areas. We move on now to our second evidence session today. I'll ask Gary Lewis and Jo Jones to introduce themselves for the record first of all, and then I'll go to Emily Reynolds online. Gary and Jo first.

I'm Gary Lewis, sports and apprenticeships director for Urdd Gobaith Cymru.

Jo Jones, regional manager for sport in south Wales.

Thank you very much, and Emily.

Emily Reynolds, national programmes director at the Youth Sport Trust.

Fantastic. It's great to have you all with us this morning. We're short of time so we'll move straight into questions, if that's okay. We'll go first to Alun Davies.

Thank you very much. I'd like to ask you about the barriers to participation in sport. We're talking about deprived communities in this context. So, in your view, what are the barriers to participation in sport?

If I can start, first of all. The main one for us is facilities, I think, in particular to get the access to the facilities after schools, if they're schools that we use, or leisure centres, because they all work differently across Wales. So, that is one of the things that I think we need to—

Sorry, could I just stop you there? You say that local authorities operate differently, so can you give us an example of a local authority that works well and one that doesn't? Perhaps you won't want to answer the second question—I can accept that.

For example, we work very closely in Cardiff with GLL. They're excellent to work with. They see the need to work with organisations outside to develop opportunities for young people. So, we do a lot with them, and we've expanded that so we've now gone into partnership and we offer apprenticeship opportunities through the medium of Welsh also in the leisure centres, and that's excellent for opportunities. Bridgend is also a council that we work really, really closely with. That is one of the most important things as well. We're talking about facilities but also collaboration between organisations. It's so important. We're all working in silos at times and we don't speak to each other, but I think we need to speak to each other better to ensure that the provision is there for young people.

Something else, also, that perhaps we don't mention, is sustainability, and to me that is something that's very, very important as well, and there is a cost. I'll give you an example of the Winter of Well-being. The Winter of Well-being has been fantastic as a scheme, and we have expanded that. We have got staff all over Wales, so we've expanded right across Wales, and we've offered things in new places for the first time. For example, we do a lot in south Meirionnydd, but we have been doing things in Blaenau Ffestiniog, in Tywyn, in places where we really haven't been operating before. We've been offering this free. And so when the Winter of Well-being comes to an end, we need to create the sustainability. So, how do we do that? That is the big question for me, and how do we act on that after that funding comes to an end. I think we need to have some sort of long-term plan with the Government, with Sport Wales, who are great with us—they're very supportive—but we really need that partnership and a collaboration between the organisations.

Just to follow on from Gary's point on collaboration there, I have another example of that. Very recently we've just established a very strong partnership with two schools in Merthyr Tydfil, which is excellent for us and will enable us now in moving forward during every half term to run out-of-school provisions and use those school facilities. Those schools support us, and there is no cost attached to that, which is excellent. So, we can really target those areas.

To answer the second part of your question, perhaps there's one council that isn't as good and where we have problems—not problems with the council, but a problem perhaps in the way they're structured; I don't know whether it's health and safety or what. For example, if we want to offer a service during holidays in Swansea, we have to have a member of staff from the council who is present in the setting at all times. If we can't pay a member of staff from the council to be on site, those children are missing out on our services through the holiday. So, that is something that is quite a big barrier for us.

Emily, did you want to come in on this?

Yes. I think from the context of the Youth Sport Trust, in terms of barriers, gender barriers still are really significant in the provision of physical education and school sport. I think in the context of this conversation, as a charity, we work in and through education, and I think one of the biggest barriers that's been found is the time allocated to physical education as we go through the stages of school life. From primary through to secondary, there's a reduction in it. And also, the variety of opportunities that are provided in different schools is under the guise of the headteacher and the leadership team, and therefore, there are inconsistencies. So, it's not necessarily a barrier specifically associated to areas of disadvantage, but on the premise of areas of disadvantage being under pressure to perform in numeracy and literacy and the wider outcomes of the school, sometimes physical education and school sport is not prioritised, and then the knock-on consequence of that is that young people from areas of disadvantage get fewer opportunities in school, which is a place where every child goes, and that has a knock-on consequence as we leave the school site.

I've got an interest in that, as it happens. What I see is that facilities, and access to facilities, is one of the main things that perhaps differentiates communities like the one I represent in Blaenau Gwent and communities here in Cardiff. You see that in the different sports. So, do you operate differently in areas such as Blaenau Gwent or Merthyr—you've given an example of Merthyr—than you do in somewhere such as the capital city?

Most certainly, yes. What we've learnt over the years is that it's not a one-size-fits-all in terms of sport across all counties. We are very fortunate; because we've been running an apprenticeship programme for many years, we have staff across all counties. We have over 40 staff members and there are also apprentices working on the ground too. In Cardiff, the needs are clearly very different. We can work in communities more easily. If we were working in Blaenau Gwent, for example, then children have to travel into school, so it's very different in terms of what we can provide and when we can make that provision. We're trying to give children the opportunities to do the same things, but there are different ways in which we can offer it and provide it. That final point was very interesting indeed. For years we've been talking about collaboration between education and sport; well, it really has to change to deal with this issue. Schools do have excellent facilities at the moment, and they have to open their doors after 15:30 without it costing a fortune, and it needs to be available on weekends too. They're local to young people. They also need to have identification with those locations outside education, outside the school day. That would really help.

And you're saying that that's not happening.

It is happening, but we do have to pay for it. It's a very expensive thing to rent AstroTurf after school or to use gym facilities. What we try and do is to work very closely with schools. We have an excellent volunteering system. We offer volunteering opportunities to the older age groups in the school, and then they can help us and work with our clubs, and I think it works well in some places. What was excellent was that we worked with a school in Abertillery as part of extending the school day. There was an excellent experience there across the three sites in Abertillery. We ran that for 10 weeks, and that went excellently. Jo.

Yes. Just on that, we ran one of our Chwarae yn Gymraeg schemes. That has been huge for second-language schools and Welsh-medium schools. The intention is to develop the Welsh language across the school and the community.

As Gary mentioned, we ran a 10-week scheme with Abertillery. One of their targets, clearly, was extending the school day, but they were really looking at ways of developing the Welsh language. It's been running for a few years. We really looked at how we could provide the same support for schools with Welsh as a second language and for Welsh-medium schools. This was a fantastic project, and we trialled it for 10 weeks. They've got three campuses in Abertillery, so we had two members of staff, with one member of staff with the school, rotating on a weekly basis to provide the opportunity for those children. That has developed into an excellent partnership. We've been working with them recently running BMX sessions as part of raising awareness—and I'm sure Gary will come on to that—regarding the street games event.

So, this is really good practice that's worked over the last few weeks. And again, we go back to the collaboration, and that is what's really required. It's also happening in other areas—Caerphilly is a fantastic example. We've got good links with primary schools there, and they really do support and enable us to run out-of-school provision there for children and young people in the area.

Can I come back to you? Abertillery is a good example, and Meryl's done excellent work over the last few years in Abertillery. And, of course, they do share facilities with the local leisure centre, as happens in Tredegar and Ebbw Vale too, and I assume it happens elsewhere too. But when I speak to groups and clubs in Abertillery and elsewhere, and when I speak to local clubs—the football club, for example, which is very pertinent at the moment—what they tell me is that they don't have the resources to invest in the facilities they need: changing rooms, the pitches themselves, the facilities that are needed so that they can participate in the league structure. Do you see that in your day-to-day work, and are you working with the boards of the different sports to improve facilities, and working with Sport Wales too in order to invest in different facilities and resources in deprived areas?

We do collaborate with other bodies. We work closely with the Welsh Rugby Union and the FAW Trust. But regarding facilities, it's not really part of what we're doing, because we just buy in to facilities across Wales. We definitely see the need to improve some facilities, but the facilities are there. They're in all our schools. There are schools everywhere, they close their doors after 4 o'clock, and there are fields, there are gyms that are not being used. So, we really need that collaboration that we've been talking about between schools, or education, and sport, to tackle these problems, I think. We—

Forgive—. Oh, sorry. No, do finish the sentence.

We've been mentioning this for years, and I just feel that we're in a position now, I think, where schools definitely want to see the children have the opportunities. The settings are there, there are plenty of companies or organisations that are keen to act, so I feel that there is a need for that now to provide opportunities for local clubs to use these facilities. What's wrong with using a school for training sessions? They're not being used enough.

Thank you. Heledd wanted to come in on this point.

You briefly mentioned the issue of transport. Now, one of the things that we'd like to understand is the barriers. It's excellent that you've listed all of the opportunities available, but that doesn't tell us anything about the background of the people who can participate in those activities. Do you hold any sort of data in terms of the backgrounds of the children involved or any barriers to the children who can't get involved in the activities that you stage? In terms of Welsh-medium education, for example, we know that some people have to travel further in some areas to access Welsh-medium education. I just want to try to understand, because it's one thing having the facilities, but if not everyone can access those facilities—. We need to understand the barriers and are there things that can change in order to ensure equal access for all to these opportunities.

Can we go to Emily first on that, because I could see that Emily was nodding? And then we'll come back to you. Emily.

Yes. From the perspective, again, of the Youth Sport Trust, predominantly in Wales, our work is around youth leadership, and the data that we have is that, when leadership provision is provided outside of the school day and supported through the local authorities, we have fewer young people who access free school meals engaging in it, because there are barriers of travel and engagement beyond the provision that happens within school, which is why we passionately talk about the importance of the school being the provider of an opportunity for all young people in physical education, sport and leadership.

There are some examples—and I'll need to resort to my notes and I'll throw them back in—of things like school transport, where the school finishes and the buses leave when the bell goes. There are examples of schools that have buses or travel opportunities that go when extra-curricular clubs finish—so, actually, the opportunity for young people to travel back after sport has finished, rather than needing to rely on their school or public transport to get home from school at the end of the day. The nature of transformation to allow all young people to access that 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. slot—you know, the end of the school day—is something that if we want to see significant shift in the engagement of young people, especially in deprived communities to access, is a critical one. And secondly, the point around when a local authority is the provider in a wraparound environment linked to the school, there is a barrier to young people on free school meals accessing the provision.

Diolch. Thank you very much for that, Emily.

Gary, roeddech chi eisiau dweud rhywbeth.

Well, just, in terms of transport, I feel that you could have the best transport in the world, but if young people don't have the money to go on the transport and use the transport, it's a problem. So, I think we need to have a focus on localised opportunities, I feel, also, and offer training to young people who are in these areas, and place the ownership on them—that's the best word I think—regarding what we're trying to do, and provide them with the opportunity. We're just doing a piece of work with Aberystwyth University on the insight regarding young people who really understand that, in schools, especially in disadvantaged areas, there are opportunities for them to work through the medium of Welsh in sport. Because I really feel that they go into secondary education, Welsh-medium schools, and they still don't understand that they have opportunities to work through the medium of Welsh after leaving school. I feel like they don't understand that, so we're putting a piece of work together at the moment on that, which will be really interesting, especially in disadvantaged areas. We've pushed, now, to ensure that our apprenticeships are available across the Valleys taskforce area; we're trying to draw new people into our schemes. But things have to be localised, I feel.

But we don't want to affect local clubs, either. There have been local clubs for years, and, traditionally, there has been a football club and a rugby club in the village. We want to make sure that they are still operating, and what we want to do is offer opportunities and make sure that these children and young people have opportunities to go to them, as exit routes, if they want to. That's what we want to ensure—widen the base at the bottom to provide the opportunities for all. There's no simple answer, as they say, but we have to collaborate much better together and stop working in silos, and we're responsible for that, as much as everybody else.

Great. Thank you very much. That's very useful. I'm trying to remember the Welsh word for 'ownership', and I can't remember it.

Yes. I couldn't remember the word.

'Perchnogaeth'.

'Perchnogaeth'—that's the word I was looking for. We'll move on now to Hefin David.

The panel will be glad to know that Sport Wales raised the community use of school facilities as a key policy approach, and I think we've done that; we've explored that issue. But the other two approaches that they talked about were aligning investment with their own priorities and collaboration through regional partnerships. So, can I ask the panellists' views on those other two priorities, please?

Yes. I agree with what Sport Wales have said. We have now expanded our structure to reflect the new regions. So, we've structured our staffing now so that we can take a pan-Wales approach, but under the Sport Wales strategy. So, that collaboration is far more effective, and the way that Sport Wales is structured is very effective and it shows us that we can follow that same structure. So, collaboration is so much better. Clearly, Sport North Wales is already there. It'll be interesting to see the other regions developing now over the next year or two.

Great. Emily, did you want to add anything on that?

Yes. I think, again, from the perspective of the Sport Wales strategy and the structure and evolution—really positive. At the moment, we definitely are more aligned to support the 22 local authorities. And, as and when the structures become fully embedded, the support we will provide, because we're not got as large a footprint in Wales as the Urdd would have, and don't necessarily have the intention to—. But I think the bigger question for this is: what is the strategy for children and young people in school sport and in the community, or is the wider strategy—not a Sport Wales strategy, but what is the ambition for every child in Wales in terms of physical education, school sport and physical activity, to enable the Sport Wales strategy and the actions of all partners to be able to achieve that? At the moment, that's probably the gap that I think is missing, so that everybody can work towards and collaborate fully on the ambitions for every child in Wales in terms of not just numbers of minutes, but the approach to the experiences and the opportunities that they should be able to access.

Do you think that needs a funding intervention, or are there other interventions that would be required?

I think there's a lot of funding—. So, even when we just articulate the Winter of Well-being investment, the grants that national partners get, I think there's money out there, but it comes down to that collaboration piece. It's easier to collaborate when you know the strategy for children and young people that you're working towards. And then the money almost facilitates the relevant organisations locally or nationally to be able to drive towards that. That came through really clearly from the survey that we delivered on behalf of Sport Wales in the middle of the pandemic. Schools, beyond the new curriculum, which is an important part of how young people will access physical education, beyond that, they're unclear of what opportunities they are providing and/or they're being steered in different directions. So, I think a strategy that clearly outlines the expectations of what a young person should experience, the time they should be accessing physical activity for, the focus of physical education within the environment, and the expectation for extra-curricular activity—. The money should back that up, but, without that as the guiding principle, money will just keep coming in and going is my view.

Okay. And to the rest of the panel, what other interventions other than funding would be useful in disadvantaged areas?

I agree.

I agree with what Emily was saying there, really. We follow the schemes and strategy of Sport Wales, and principles are strong for us—so, inclusion is the most important thing for us, and to ensure that the offer is there. I'm not sure how to answer the question, really, but, regarding the structure of our work, that that's right, and the opportunities are there—. I don't know about other barriers; I can't think of any there, really.

All right. Okay.

Hefin, was there anything else you wanted to ask?

No. If you're happy, we'll move on to Heledd Fychan.

Thank you very much, and thank you for the evidence this morning. I just wanted to ask—you've talked quite a lot about the importance of collaboration with different bodies, you've mentioned local authorities and so forth, but do you think there's potential in terms of collaborating to deliver even further in other policy areas, for example, health, education, justice, or is this something that you're doing currently? If so, how is it funded, or do you think there's potential to do more if you were being funded to do so?

Okay, we'll go to Gary first and then Emily.

Certainly, there are opportunities. We don't do a great deal outside the sport sector at the moment, if I'm honest, but there are certainly opportunities for collaboration with education, yes, but also with health, 100 per cent. Now, GLL, as leisure organisations, do a great deal in planning to work with that. We aren't doing that much, if I'm honest, Heledd, but it's something that we would certainly welcome doing and we will look into it.

Great.

Emily, was there anything you wanted to add?

Yes. I think, Heledd, from the perspective of that, again, the young ambassador programme is a good example of that, the link between, I think, sport and education in that context is relatively strong, but the connectivity to health and the outcome of an empowered generation of young people on their mental and physical health—the connections potentially aren't being made formally, which, again, brings me back to a joined-up Government strategy that demonstrates the importance of physical education, physical activity and school sport, whether that's prevention measures, where there are a range of organisations—. I know StreetGames have spoken earlier. There are a range of excellent charities that use sport as a vehicle to prevent crime and then re-engage young people. But we can't quite see the part they're playing as the collective, because there's not that joined-up strategy. So, I think the joined-up, cross-department, in effect, strategy provides a really good compass to recognise then where there should be disproportionate investment of funds in areas of disadvantage with a purpose about striving to level up, bring everybody on the same agenda. So, at the moment, my view is there is occasionally good engagement between health and education, and education and sport, but not the three together.

There is one thing that we have done, which is we have created a well-being package for young people from 14 and up in school, where we can go into the school and go over it. A number of partners have worked on the scheme with us, for example, Show Racism the Red Card, Disability Wales—

Eating healthily.

Yes, eating healthily. There are all sorts of elements around well-being and health, really. So, we're doing a lot with that, but, as Emily said, we're doing that on our own, so that isn't something that we've worked with different sectors to do. Certainly, it's something that we would welcome looking at trying to do.

Great. Heledd, was there anything else you wanted to ask? No?

No, that's great. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We'll move on to Carolyn Thomas.

Okay. Thank you. Do you think that there's enough data to depict what's needed in disadvantaged areas, and do you think that Sport Wales use the data well to fund sport in disadvantaged areas? Sorry, did you hear me? I was sitting too far back from the microphone, I think, so. Okay.

Emily, she nodded.

Okay, shall we go to—? Well, let's go to Emily first, because—. Emily.

Brilliant. So, in terms of Sport Wales sharing that data with us, through the school sports survey predominantly, and some of the wider work, we get the free school meals data. So, I think that is a level of data that is shared with us as a national partner. The mechanics of that being used at a local authority level, I am less close to. I think there are increased data sets or improved data sets that could be used as benchmarks beyond free school meals, so things that we utilise as an organisation and we have done for some work that we're doing in Wales is information around destination data, for example. So, I think there is an opportunity for richer data to inform where or why investment is positioned, based on physical activity and, as Gary has mentioned, pathways into employment in and through sport that could be more visually presented and more readily available for organisations to utilise.

Gary.

It's the same for us. Like Emily, we use the school sports survey, but also we use free school meals data in schools. For example, 6,000 of our members are in receipt of free school meals. So, we have that information, but if we use the Welsh index of multiple deprivation, as everyone seems to do, it does change depending on the area. For example, if you put in 'access to services' for a county, it might come up showing as deprived, but if you put 'income' in, it shows as not being deprived. So, it's very difficult for organisations such as ours to operate effectively. It would be nice to have more focus and more,

'You tell us what you want to collect, or how we collect it.'

We would like some guidance on that, without a doubt.

Thank you for that. Carolyn, was there anything else you wanted to ask, or are you happy—?

Are you happy to move on?

No, that's fine, thank you.

Great. We'll move on to Tom Giffard.

Thanks, Delyth. Can I ask how participation gaps that have widened during the pandemic are being tackled at the moment?

Do you want to go first?

Well, the gender participation is excellent. We have, at the moment—. We did have 15,000 children and young people taking part in our weekly clubs before the pandemic. We're back now to over 10,000. So, it's back up, and about 60 per cent of those are girls, which is really good for us. I don't know why, but we haven't had any problem in attracting more girls to take part in weekly clubs.

What was good over the pandemic, what we did was we worked—and this goes back to what Emily said, really—closely with schools through the pandemic and we changed what we were offering. We offered a kind of shopping list to each school, 'We can operate like this, online or come into school', and I think that helped us a lot. So, once the pandemic came to an end—hopefully it has come to an end—we could act immediately, and that's what's been really nice. So, participation is going back along the right track, and we've seen that, gender wise, it's excellent.

We're also working closely with Disability Sport Wales, with Insport, to ensure that everything we offer is inclusive. We're going for the gold standard this year, so we've gone through three levels already, and that is something that we certainly want to develop further.

But something else as well is we sometimes forget about the Welsh language. We want to ensure that we're hitting the targets regarding the Welsh language, and what we believe is that every child and young person should have the opportunity to do sport and activities outside of school through the medium of Welsh. They receive their education through the Welsh language, so they should have opportunities to do other things through the medium of Welsh, and I do feel that that, participation wise, can be difficult sometimes.

And, as Gary mentioned, during the pandemic, we as an organisation didn't rest on our laurels; we had to think what we could do, and we took virtually everything online first of all. We established two projects that ran along the pandemic, #HydrefHeini and #ActifAdref, and that was excellent, and that has really contributed to our participation level as we hopefully emerge from this pandemic.

We mentioned gender. We recently established the #FelMerch project. So, that's a project to target young women aged 14 to 25 because we're very aware—and there's a great deal of research—that a lot of girls, having got to secondary school, don't participate as much in sport. We certainly feel—. We saw an increase in the number of teams that participated in our girls seven-a-side rugby competition, which was excellent, and that's something that we're really focusing on now in terms of how we can establish hubs within communities and work with secondary schools, colleges and universities to ensure that these young women do have access to sporting activities.

An example of that is that there were over 100 girls teams competing over the week in the seven-a-side rugby, and that was fantastic to see, but what we need to make sure is that they have something to do every week, not just as a one-off with their school. That's why—and I come back to Emily again—the link between the community and the school is so important.

Yes, absolutely. Emily, before we come to you, I think Alun just wants to come in on something.

No, I was agreeing with what was being said.

Oh, you were agreeing. Forgive me. Emily, was there anything you wanted to add on this?

Yes. I think, from a post-pandemic situation, one of the things it's really interesting to hear the team from the Urdd reference is the girls' engagement. I think it was really telling that, through the pandemic, girls were able to find and got used to adapting to activities online and found different activities, whereas, typically, boys, who are more inclined to be involved in team sports, which stopped over the pandemic, found it much harder to find an alternative. So, I think there's a big call to action, and there has been, to educators to ensure that whatever it was girls were experiencing more positively through the online environment, potentially different activities, different environments, they've been able to sustain that. And the narrative from teachers is they took lots of lessons from it.

But I think the return to participation has been positive, because young people articulated in lots of the research that they'd recognised, potentially based on the messaging that was coming out nationally, how, 'The only thing you can do is exercise for an hour a day' demonstrates its importance. But we've potentially lost that narrative that was coming centrally—like that was the only thing you could do, it was important, and young people recognised it.

But we have the fastest growing crisis in young people with the obesity levels. So, we've got low-hanging fruit that have got back in, but I think the—. We've just recently done a YouGov poll, and only one in five parents understand and recognise that young people should be exercising for 60 active minutes a day. And that's to avoid disease, not the optimal amount of exercise. So, I think the work being done for us collectively is about educating parents and families on the significant importance of 60 active minutes a day as a minimum. I think 9 per cent of children and young people met that in Wales throughout the pandemic period. These are really, really big issues for us and potentially a ticking time bomb.

And the other one was about 83 per cent of parents feeling that their children are spending too much time online. So, again, our responsibility to consider how, for those of you that are interested in the world of employment, sport can be a place where human skills are developed that are going to be really critical for the world of employment later on. So, part of our work is about helping educators present the message of the importance of physical activity on your cardiovascular part—your physical health—and the role of sport in creating well-rounded young people when lots of life is being spent online. So, that's the work that we're doing in terms of messaging around PE, sports post pandemic, given lots of young people were not active through that period.

And there are some great examples. There's one Welsh example that we—. Basically, the Youth Sport Trust didn't do anything; we just sought schools that took an approach to an active-recovery curriculum in supporting young people's recovery. They built in active pedagogy. So, their lessons were taught though physical activity—their numeracy and literacy lessons. They increased physical activity, potentially, at the start of the day, using things like the daily mile, which many schools utilise. They built in longer breaks at lunch and break time, recognising that the young people weren't necessarily well coming back to school and needed that time to recover. So, we've got some great case studies of schools that used different approaches that put physical activity at the heart of their recovery curriculum to support young people's return.

Brilliant. I was going to follow up and ask whether anybody had learned any positives from the pandemic and changed approaches. I think a few people have touched on that already, so I don't know if anybody's got anything additional on that front they wanted to add, or whether you've said, on that front, everything you wanted to say already.

One other lesson learned—and this is a really interesting one as somebody and as an organisation that are really passionate about the power of young people getting on the bus to represent their school in competition—one big lesson was, when restrictions lifted and they could do activity in school but potentially not travel between schools, many schools saw a spike in participation because when you have to be selected to represent the school, often numbers dwindle very early on because only the school team are selected and they go and compete. So, we have some schools—and I think there's more learning and research and understanding needed on this to understand the longer term effect—that have started to focus their September to December provision purely on in-school clubs and participation to keep more young people involved and engaged in school with intra-house activity before doing that selection process that meant, naturally, some young people missed out. That's been quite significant.

And the second is the scheduling of sport. Historically, we have a term when football is played, a term when rugby is played, a term when netball is played, and actually, seasonally, that sometimes doesn't work for young people. So, schools have twisted and altered, and that's had a positive impact, and some schools have held on to that. And that's across—I'm using an example here from England—state and independent.

For us, participation in schools and competitions has just gone from strength to strength. We have more competing after the pandemic than before, definitely. But, going back also, children and young people want to take part in activities. I think one other thing that we've really improved is how we do the marketing around this in disadvantaged areas—how we ensure that they understand that there's an offer for them, and what's available to them. So, there's an opportunity for us all to do that well, too. That's why, within the apprenticeship scheme, we're very keen to offer opportunities to young people who live locally, in the disadvantaged areas, to join the scheme. It's something that I'm really keen to see develop. So, if anybody's got ideas on how we can develop that further, I'd be very grateful.

Great. We have four minutes left. Emily, Jo or Gary, is there anything that you wanted to add that you haven't covered in responses to questions? It's fine if not, but I'm just asking if there is some issue that you really wanted to raise.

Well, it's happening with the Sport Wales funding model now, but I did want to address how we receive our funding. For example, if we have long-term funding, then we have more—. We shouldn't be scared of failure. We have to try new things, and when we're working to an annual funding model, that can be very difficult indeed. So, we need to expand that, and if we can get long-term funding and improved collaboration, then I think the only way is up—we really can develop, I'm sure.

Great. Thanks very much.

Emily, I could see that you were nodding when that was being said.

Yes, I fully agree. Long-term funding, but with, before that, an understanding of what we're trying to achieve in terms of the expectations and aspirations for children and young people through physical activity and sport, with the long-term funding to back it up and that can allow anybody to work towards it.

Great. Thank you all very much.

I thank you all so much for the evidence this morning.

A transcript of what you've said will be sent to you to check for factual accuracy. Perhaps there will be some additional issues that we'd like to write to you about, or if there's something about which you'd like to send more details to us, that would be fantastic as well. But this has been very useful. Thank you very much.

One other thing is that the urban games are on next weekend in the bay, so you're all welcome to come and see the activities that will be going on. It's going to be excellent.

The weekend coming?

No, the next one.

Thank you very much. Fantastic. That's a timely plug. Thank you very much for the evidence.

Diolch.

Members, we'll now take a short break, until 20 past. Thank you.

Welcome back to our inquiry into participation in sport in disadvantaged areas. We are hybrid today; some Members and some of our witnesses are joining us through video link and others are in the room. I'm very pleased to welcome our final witness for today's session. May I ask you, Melitta, to introduce yourself for the record, please?

Good morning, everybody. I'm Melitta McNarry. I'm part of the Welsh Institute of Physical Activity, Health and Sport and I'm based at Swansea University.

Fantastic. It's great to have you with us, Melitta. Thank you so much for your time. We'll move straight to questions from Members and we'll go first to Alun Davies.

Thank you very much. I'm grateful for your time this morning. I'm interested in your specialisms around physical activity and the impact that that has on, I think it's health, isn't it, and activity levels? I'm wondering if you have any analysis on the barriers that would impact a young person growing up, for example in my constituency in Blaenau Gwent, as opposed to that same young person growing up in a very affluent, middle-class neighbourhood somewhere else.

It's a very interesting question and there's no simple answer. I think the best evidence we have to date, really, highlights that it's a world of interactions. So, you can get barriers at the individual, the societal, the neighbourhood levels and those barriers aren't independent of each other. So, there are the obvious ones that spring to mind from the offset, so there are the cost implications of being able to engage in activities, there's access to facilities, which is obviously multifaceted, there's how local those facilities are and what the transport options for people to get to facilities are if they aren't walkable, and then there are the cost implications of that transport if it's not local as well. And those are just a few of the ones that spring to mind, and these are obviously also highly specific, depending on, if you like, protected characteristics, so gender, ethnicity—all these things then interact over and above on environmental characteristics, for example, to determine what the specific barriers are. So, I'm afraid I can't give a concise and simple answer, because it is very, very specific.

Okay, well, let's go back to, I think, the middle part of that issue. You said about the particular barriers facing people with protected characteristics. Why would somebody, that person with protected characteristics, face additional barriers in Blaenau Gwent that they wouldn't face somewhere else?

It depends on which particular characteristics that you're referring to, but if we just take a fairly generic example, so if we compare, perhaps, a very diverse city with a less diverse village or more rural area, then there's an element of comfort, especially, for people who have, perhaps, more diverse characteristics. So, ethnic minorities, people from the LGBTQ+ population, they often find that when there aren't other people that are similar, they feel discouraged from going to participate in sport or physical activity opportunities because of what they perceive as barriers. There is a growing amount of work looking at how we can diversify offers in more rural areas and less diverse areas to allow those people to feel more comfortable, but it is a massive task, it has to be said.

Can I say, you appear, in that reply, to be presupposing that a disadvantaged community is a rural community or a community living in a small place, if you like. Now, where I'm sitting at the moment in Cardiff Bay, we've got communities all around us here that have large proportions of people who come from different backgrounds and are also some of the most deprived in Wales. So, I'm not convinced that the answer you've just given outlines an additional barrier, because it's a different population. But the population here in Cardiff, in many ways, is as disadvantaged as a different population living in a different place.

Yes. I was only using it as a generic example, as I said from the outset, it was just to provide the context. I wasn't denying that there are areas, within cities, for example, that have high levels of deprivation.

Okay. I'm still trying to understand the fundamental point about social disadvantage as being a key determinant, and I'm not convinced that I'm getting that from the replies that you're giving at the moment. I'm interested in understanding the barriers that exist because of poverty. What you've just said I think is perfectly fair and reasonable, by the way, but I'm not sure it's defined by poverty; I think it's defined by other matters. And so we're looking at how living in an area that is disadvantaged creates an additional barrier over and above the existing barriers that may or may not exist in different places. I'm wondering, do you have any experience or research that points to differential levels of physical activity or access to physical activity, or access to sport or access to different opportunities for physical activity, as a consequence of poverty?

I specifically don't have that research, but it would certainly be able to be obtained from some of the things like the national survey, where that data is collected. We've got international evidence to demonstrate that physical activity is lower in areas of deprivation; it's not made specific to Wales, but we do have good evidence to support that.

Could you outline what that evidence is, then, please?

It's precisely that, that in those areas where they are more disadvantaged, physical activity levels are not as high, so they don't engage as regularly in physical activity. There are some questions about sport participation. It appears to be that if there is availability and cost isn't a major barrier, then those in deprived areas will participate in sport, but perhaps the range of sports is very different. So, some of the more niche sports, some of the sports that require more specific equipment or facilities, then, aren't engaged in. So, there are nuances as to what sports they will participate in.

In terms of the barriers, just to circle back to those—the cost, the time pressure. For many people, engaging in physical activity, if they're from a deprived area—especially if we're talking about sport as a subset of physical activity—it just isn't an available luxury. So, they haven't got the finances to engage in those sports. I think I saw some statistics where the average amount of money spent for those from deprived areas was something like £1.50 compared to £10 or so from those from well-off areas. So, this is a significant burden—a significant barrier, I should say, not burden—to participation for them, and that they don't typically have the time, because of the types of jobs they're involved in, maybe they have multiple different sources of income, and they have to juggle that with when they can participate in activity. I hope that answers your question a little bit more clearly than previously.

Okay. I'm grateful to you for that. And I'm interested in what you just said about the international examples. I presume, therefore, that you have examples or access to examples, which perhaps you could provide to the committee, of areas or places where that research has been conducted and what those findings are, but also whether you have access to information about the sorts of interventions that Governments are taking in those places to address those issues.

I could certainly put something together for you on the basis of the literature on the international side of things. In terms of interventions that are being taken, there is quite a range. One of the most common, from a research perspective, is in terms of increasing participation by providing activity vouchers. So, trying to overcome that cost barrier by providing people with vouchers that enable them to access opportunities that previously they couldn't, and that's been looked at in terms of both adults and children internationally, but also here in Wales. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but there was an Active programme, as it was called, that was run about three or four years ago in Swansea, where they looked at providing activity vouchers to children, and they found that it had a very positive influence on their attitudes to physical activity and enabled children from disadvantaged backgrounds to access broader opportunities for both sport and physical activity. So, there are great examples, on a local level, that have worked, but, obviously, there are elements that need to be considered, shall we say, in terms of activity vouchers, as they're not easy to do on a wide scale, as what often is cited in the literature—there's a limitation to them.

Okay. It would be useful, Melitta, if you could share that information with us about the international examples. Thank you.

Certainly. Diolch yn fawr iawn. We'll move on now to Carolyn Thomas.

Thank you. Do you have good enough data to depict sporting demand in disadvantaged communities, and do you think that more qualitative data is needed, as opposed to just quantitative data? Do you think that Sport Wales use the data effectively regarding funding for sports in disadvantaged areas? Thank you.

You might have to remind me of the second part of that question in a moment. So, to start off: do we have good-quality data? We are very fortunate that we have a great range of quite good data sets, so we're talking about things like the school sports survey, the national survey for Wales, SHRN surveys, all of those ones, that are done on a very large scale. Now, the issue with surveys is fundamentally the depth of information that they can provide, and you hit the nail on the head when you said whether or not quantitative data is sufficient to enable us to answer these questions. I think it allows us to identify where further insight is needed and then I do think we need to go and address that by getting the lived experiences of people, and that's something that is increasingly called for across the area.

One of the issues we do have with the data sets that have been collected is their accessibility. So, often, they're quite difficult to actually interrogate, they're not easily accessible to researchers or policy makers and it also influences the level of detail that can be drilled down to. So, the protected characteristics, for example, that we mentioned before, often you can't get to that level of detail on a localised scale, which prevents key conclusions from being able to be drawn. So, the data is there, it's perhaps not as user-friendly as it is in other parts of the UK, and that's something we could certainly work on. Could you remind me of the second part of your question?

Yes. In your opinion, do you believe that Sport Wales uses that data to guide the funding to sports in disadvantaged areas?

Sport Wales do as good a job as they can within the funding landscape that they are given. I think one of the problems, perhaps, is the timelines on which funding is made available, which then limits how things can be implemented. Certainly from our perspective, from the WIPAHS perspective, where we often run evaluations of initiatives, because of the funding cycles, we often come at a slightly later date, which limits the evaluations that we could run. If we could be involved from the outset, then there might be more scope to run more efficient evaluations that would then help to feed into those funding questions and allocation of resources, perhaps.

Okay, thank you. That's it.

That's great. Thank you so much. Can we move on now to Hefin David?

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we hear you fine.

The three areas that Sport Wales raised with us and their three key policy approaches were aligning investments with their priorities, collaborating through regional partnerships, but I'd like to start with community use of school facilities, and what your view is, first of all, on that—community use of school facilities.

So, you mean in terms of the effectiveness of that or—?

Well, the effectiveness and ability of communities to use them, and perhaps the most effective areas in which this is being done.

As you will be fully aware, they are currently running the active education beyond the school day initiative, and we are involved with the evaluation of that. I think it has a lot of potential. There are clearly issues with accessing facilities, the upkeep of those facilities and where those costs will fall at the end of the day, but at the centre of it, making schools community hubs is a very sensible use of available resources. So, rather than trying to provide new facilities, using the facilities we already have and widening access to them is a much more cost-effective and, you would therefore hope, sustainable approach to promoting community cohesion, but also physical activity and sport participation.

Why does it need to be said, after we've been talking about community schools for so long? Why does it need to be even said that that needs to happen? Why isn't it happening as a matter of course?

That's a very good question. I don't think I know the answer, in all honesty. As you say, we have been talking about it for a long time and it's such an obvious step that you would think it would have been done before, but it certainly isn't widely done. I presume it's because of some of the additional factors around access to school facilities and what happens if something goes wrong on those school facilities, the costs of repairing things if they get damaged and where they fall if it's a community hub after school hours. It's not something that I—[Interruption.]

Sorry, it's not something that you—.

Know the answer to.

Okay.

That's absolutely fine, by the way. It's quite refreshing, sometimes, to hear people say that.

It's not a test.

No.

And what about aligning investment with Sport Wales's priorities and also collaborating through regional partnerships? Are they effective approaches, do you think?

They have a lot of potential to address some of those more regional questions that perhaps get lost when we start looking at things at a national level, and I think the more collaboration we can get, the more we can join up the dots, the better. There's certainly been a lot of initial successes, I would say, from the regional partnerships, but there are still a lot of relationships that need to be bedded in, and I think there's a lot of scope to ensure it's up to its full potential and it doesn't just become something that we've tried and moved on from and reverted back to a wider lens.

Are there examples of really good practice that Sport Wales do and others do to improve participation in disadvantaged areas?

I think one of the best, potential, things that are coming along is the daily active—how that might integrate with education and health to, theoretically, provide it across the population, so it won't be targeted at disadvantaged people, but it will access disadvantaged people in the same was as it will access any other part of the population. I think the new curriculum does have great capacity, great potential to have meaningful impacts on sport and physical activity participation, because if we can embed it within the national curriculum, then it's not an additional message, it's not an additional burden on people to engage in these things; it's just 'This is part of an expectation.' It's not an 'expectation'—that's the wrong word—but it's part of daily life. It's not something that sits on the side of it, and it puts it at the front and centre of people's awareness, and I think, increasingly, that's one of the things—. I'm slightly going on a tangent here, but bear with me. One of the things that's become very evident from policy documents is that whilst physical activity is mentioned in a lot of policies, it is rarely the focus, and it's rarely a marker of success or a primary outcome. If we were to ensure that physical activity gets that attention, so that we start to actually prioritise it, only then will we genuinely see things like these community hubs become something that people focus on developing. Otherwise it's just another task for people and they think, 'Well, I'm already trying to develop the education stream, how can I now bring in a physical activity and health stream as well?'

So, my last question then would be: to what extent do you think this is a funding issue, or is it more proportionally a priority and co-ordination issue? So, is it the fact that disadvantaged areas are finding difficulty in co-ordinating and prioritising physical activity, or is it the fact that they are short of money to do that, even if they wanted to?

I honestly think it's both. I think there is a big piece that needs to be done around co-ordination and prioritisation, but those things can only be actioned with appropriate resources and facilities and opportunities being provided. So, we can have the best priorities set, but if they then can't action it, which requires the funding, it wouldn't actually come to reality. So, I don't think one would be successful without the other.

Okay. Thanks, Chair.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much for that.

We'll move on to Tom Giffard.

I just wanted to ask more than anything about the pandemic and how participation gaps widened during the pandemic, how are those being tackled, and also is there good practice, if you like, that has been learned during the pandemic that perhaps can change the way we look at disadvantaged areas and participation.

Yes, so, in terms of physical activity and the pandemic, we obviously saw a bit of—I can't think what the right letter is—an initial peak in people's physical activity levels as people suddenly realised that the only reason they could go outside was to exercise, so everyone started going for a walk, and then real life has slowly resumed and physical activity levels have declined, and in many areas, they're now lower than they were pre pandemic. And a lot of people are citing that they believe that the pandemic has had a negative impact on their physical activity levels, and this has been especially demonstrated in the most deprived areas, where they're potentially more at risk because of the type of employment that they've been in, when they're in low-paid, front-line jobs; poor housing conditions; reliance on public transport among other factors, all of which have been influenced by the pandemic, and potentially just again deprioritise that physical activity even further.

One of the other things that's become evident is that as things have reopened, so as access to facilities, as sports have tried to restart following our exit from the lockdowns, in the most deprived areas this has been the slowest process. So, for many clubs, many organisations in deprived areas, they are only now beginning to be able to reopen, but some of them—I think I saw a figure around 50 per cent—are still struggling to get access to facilities that they previously had. So, the pandemic has definitely widened the disparity in opportunity.

Are there examples of good practice? I'm not sure that I've come across any at the moment, no.

Thank you for that. And finally, we'll go to Heledd Fychan.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, thank you. One of the reflections we've had from some of the other witnesses this morning has been around the lack of a strategy in terms of looking at how sport contributes to delivering across other policy areas, such as health, education and justice. Is this something that's become apparent in some of your research in terms of where this has been effective, or where there's potential to do more in this area?

I think that's one of the main strengths of physical activity: the multiple dividends it can pay, both acutely and chronically, in the long term. It depends on which population we're talking about, but at the beginning of this we did start by talking about young people and children. And if we take them as our example, if we were to be able to promote physical activity sustainably and effectively, we have very conclusive evidence in the literature that that would provide dividends from the perspective of education. So, people are better at concentrating, their academic achievement is higher, they're less disruptive in school settings, as a few examples. From a health perspective, obviously we know the benefits of physical activity for health, massively reducing costs on the NHS. And then from a crime prevention perspective, we've actually been doing some work with the police and crime commissioners to look at sport and physical activity as a crime prevention strategy, and that's showing some very encouraging findings, that it can significantly reduce people's entrance into the youth justice system.

So, I do strongly believe that, if we can improve that physical activity offer and engage people in it, which are obviously two separate elements, then we will see benefits across the spectrum. But in order to be able to do that, we really do need to start joining up policies and having policies that work to address these multiple things, using probably a whole-system approach, and thereby accounting for the fact that not one of those things happens in isolation. So, we can't just take education, we can't just take health and then look to treat them independently; we need to start looking at their intersections and interactions to get the greatest gains in the shortest period of time, and for the best cost-effectiveness, as well.

Thank you. I have nothing further, Chair.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Melitta, was there anything further that you had hoped to bring up in the evidence that hasn't come up in the questions, please?

The only other point that I was contemplating this morning was about the implementation of the national curriculum. In fact, I probably should have said in response to one of the questions earlier about how has the pandemic disadvantaged or differentially influenced certain areas. There seems to be some discussion over whether or not the national curriculum is going to get implemented at the same point across the nation, and it seems to be that some areas, which are the most deprived, are not in a situation where they can implement that national curriculum due to impacts of the pandemic, which will likely cause further disparities to occur. So, I think in terms of just answering that question on the pandemic, that's something I just wanted to raise.

That's really useful for us to have on our agenda as well, so thank you so much. Thank you very much for your evidence this morning. A transcript is going to be sent to you about what you said, just to check, and if there's anything further—I know that Alun had mentioned that it would be really useful if you could send us some of that evidence on international examples—if there's anything further that you think of later that you'd like us to keep in consideration, we'd be grateful. But thank you very much for your evidence.

Thank you very much again.

I'm sure that we'll be in touch very soon. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today.

Thank you so much. Diolch yn fawr.

Members, we will move straight, therefore—.

Thank you again, Melitta.

We will move straight on to papers to note. Item 5.1 is the written response by the Welsh Government to recommendations in the committee's report on the pre-appointment hearing for the preferred candidate for the chair of Sport Wales. Item 5.2, a letter from the Counsel General to the Chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee regarding the Queen's speech 2022. Item 5.3 is a letter from the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language to us regarding draft Welsh Language Standards (No. 8) Regulations 2022. And item 5.4, additional information from the Football Association of Wales following the meeting on 4 May. Does anyone have any comments to note on these papers? Are you content to note them? Heledd.

Yes. Clearly, in terms of paper 5.3, there are questions as to what we as a committee would wish to do in terms of further scrutiny. Personally, I'm comfortable that we don't need to do anything further, given the involvement of the committee in the previous Senedd, but it's clearly something that we would want to keep an eye on as things do develop.

Just in terms of the additional information from the FAW, is this something that we could write to both the Minister for the Economy and the Deputy Minister on? Because clearly it would be useful to know, particularly in the context of the World Cup, what the investment will be in football, because clearly it would be worrying if we saw that opportunities were being missed in terms of engagement with the grass roots.

Thank you for that. Does anyone disagree with anything there, or are you content? Okay. Thank you very much.

One other thing that I wanted to raise is that the Welsh Government has offered a briefing on diversity in public appointments, in response to our pre-appointment scrutiny of the chair of Sport Wales. Are you happy for me to accept that offer of a briefing? Yes. Okay.

If everyone is content, I propose under Standing Order 17.42 that we resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting, and we will continue in private session. We'll wait to hear that we are in private session.