Rutland County Council’s School Games under threat after officer leaves

Inter-school competition in Rutland could be in jeopardy for this year due to staffing changes in the financially under pressure county council.

A report to the Rutland schools forum committee yesterday (Thursday, September 26) has warned that school competitions after the October half term could be under threat in part due to the departure of one of the council’s sports officers, who had been involved in organising events.

Rutland County Council (RCC) currently runs the Rutland School Games with funding from Sports England and also operates the Schools Sports Partnership.

This year, as part of a cost saving restructure of its departments, the authority has replaced its Active Rutland scheme, which ran the sports events, with an overarching communities and wellbeing service.

There is uncertainty about what will happen and head of communities at prevention at the county council Bernadette Caffrey said there is likely to be a gap in sports provision after October.

One solution is that a school takes on the running of the school games.

Schools forum member Stuart Williams, who is head of Catmose College in Oakham, was noticeably angry about the situation and the late notice given to schools.

He said there were ‘lots of rumours swirling around that are deeply unhelpful’ and his main concern was the children who could be affected by a loss of sport.

He said: “I don’t mind a sticky plaster solution to get us through the rest of the year. We need that. We don’t want to lose what we have got. But we need a longer term solution.”

He said it was not clear what the current situation was with the county council which was ‘not acceptable’ and communication had been ‘distinctly lacking’.

He said: “There needs to be a briefing paper to head teachers and it needs to be quick.”

The council receives £52,300 in funding from Sport England and individual Rutland Schools and had costs of £86,860, which were mostly to cover the two Active Rutland officers .It was not made clear at the meeting whether the Active Rutland officer who has left will be replaced or whether the role has been made redundant.

The School Sports Partnership involves 11 schools across Rutland, who each pay £1,750 to take part. However they have not been invoiced this year and it is unclear whether it will happen. A larger number of schools take part in the Rutland school games.

The senior officer said the council had been unable to inform the schools earlier due to HR processes. She said there was a possibility to move competitions to later in the school year, but the practicalities were queried by chair of the forum Ben Solly, who is executive head teacher at Uppingham Community College.

The forum decided that a briefing note should be sent to schools to ask if they wanted to express an interest in running the events in the short term.