Judy Murray has backed calls for the Scottish Government to fulfil its election pledge of 2021, and double the investment in sport and active living, to £100million per year.
Speaking from Dunblane primary, where both she and her two sons Andy and Jamie went to school, the former GB Fed Cup captain said it was the ‘perfect time to do it’, with Scotland taking part in the World Cup finals, and the Commonwealth Games coming to Glasgow next year.
‘I would 100 per cent back it,’ said Murray,
‘If you look at what’s coming up, of course we’ve got the excitement of the World Cup, we’ve got the Commonwealth Games coming.
‘The World Cup is very exciting, and you can feel the nation getting together. You can see that happening, just like when Andy won Wimbledon. People remember where they were when it happened, and it’s like: “Wow, somebody Scottish won Wimbledon”.
‘Nobody would ever have imagined that. You have to harness that moment and think about what’s next.
‘There’s your role models, there’s your excitement, there’s your national treasures.
‘Sport can bring the nation together.’
Last month, sporting leaders told Daily Mail Sport that Scottish sport is now ‘running on empty’, with a ‘perfect storm of rising costs, increased demand and reduced real term funding’ threatening ‘the ability for many to continue to operate properly’.
Thirty-nine governing bodies have since written to the government, urging them to come good on their election promise.
Murray, who told Daily Mail Sport in June that the Scottish government was failing Scottish sport and creating a ‘have and have-nots’ environment for children, has now taken the matter into her own hands, and is campaigning to make PE a daily part of primary school life. Pupils, she said, should get at least 40 minutes of physical education per day, with PE given the same precedence as literacy and numeracy.
Not doing so, she believes, will have major impacts not only on the health of the nation, but on the success and confidence of the next generation.
‘The excitement and build-up of the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games needs to be harnessed,’ she continued.
‘In my day, and certainly in Jamie and Andy’s day, when I started as a volunteer at the local tennis club, we were all teams of volunteers. It was inexpensive, it was accessible, it was affordable. It was doable. Those things seem to be few and far between now.
‘It just feels to me that sport has become about those who have means and those who don’t, and for me, school is the place where kids should have the opportunity to try all sorts of things, not just sport, but music and art as well.
‘I do think the decline in PE in state schools is unforgivable.
‘You just have to look at the state of our NHS. There is an obesity problem.. If we’ve got kids in primary schools enjoying being physically active on a daily basis, it becomes a way of life.
‘I think most local councils have taken away the specialist PE teachers that were in primary schools and redeployed them into secondary schools. It’s not enough to start that kind of thing in secondary schools. It’s almost too late. I mean, the window for developing great coordination skills is between eight and 12. You’ve got to start that in the primary schools.
‘And for me, you know, my focus is on girls. We need more women in the sporting workforce, which I’ve been banging on about for a long time.
‘I understand the world according to girls because I was once a girl, and the world has changed a lot since then. But I understand that if you make the PE offering engaging, stimulating, colourful, playful, well-organised, well-managed, short, sharp bursts because concentration spans are small, are short, then you have much more chance of them running into the gym because they want to do it rather than hanging back because they don’t want to go in because it’s boring and it’s not stimulating.
‘I know it would require significant investment. It would require specialist PE teachers or sports coaches to come in and help to deliver that activity or to help the teachers to deliver better quality activity because there are many primary school teachers who have had very little training in how to deliver physical activity who don’t have the confidence to deliver that.
‘I mean, I’m not sure that I would be entirely confident to deliver to 33 kids on a badminton court even now, and I have huge experience of it. So I think I would like to see that being brought back.
‘We owe it to ourselves. If we want to be a more healthy, more active nation, it’s got to start early. They’ve tried to do it, of course, with school meals and so forth, and that in itself will possibly achieve something, but you’ve got to harness that with being active on a daily basis, and many kids are not active on a daily basis, and a lot of that has to do with screen time and also helicopter parenting.’
Murray told Daily Mail Sport she hadn’t yet spoken to the government about her idea, but she insisted the benefits were clear. She has seen first-hand, for example, the positive effect of her Learn to Lead programme in schools, which she launched earlier this year.
The initiative, which gives p6 and p7 girls the chance to develop basic leadership and organisational skills by training them to set up and run lunchtime or after school starter tennis clubs for younger pupils, has already been picked up by Sky, who have put investment into the programme. This, in itself, will allow 50 further schools to take part, on top of the 25 already signed up.
‘It’s really important to me that we do this programme really well,’ said Murray.
‘I’m not looking to conquer the world with it. I just want it to be really good, and to invest in some really good people who will keep this going way beyond my time. You don’t get that with so many big campaigns where they throw out big numbers. I’ve never done my sport for commercial reward. ‘If I had, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now. I want to do it in Scotland, where I can be here and be part of it, working with my friends who have the same beliefs. We just want more girls to learn to lead and to get involved.
‘For me, it’s more than just being about tennis. The programme is very much about empowering girls to build confidence, to build competence in leading. And that was what we saw them doing at Dunblane Primary today.’
Read more
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- Is the Scottish Government neglecting future Olympians by failing to invest in sports opportunities for schoolchildren?
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