A senior source from Mr Sunak’s campaign said: “There has been a longstanding concern that sport isn’t measured or assessed by Ofsted, so it’s an easy thing for schools to push out of the school day.
“Particularly on the back of the pandemic, lots of parents are concerned about their children not being physically active.”
Schools are currently inspected on four main criteria – the quality of education, the behavior and attitudes of children, the personal development of youngsters and the leadership and management of the institution.
Following an inspection, schools are marked by Ofsted in one of four categories – outstanding, good, requires improvement, and inadequate.
Schools which fall into the bottom two categories – requires improvement, and inadequate – are likely to find it more difficult to recruit both teachers, as well as children, with implications for their funding.
Changing the Ofsted inspection framework to include sport is seen by Mr Sunak’s supporters as a way to ensure schools are taking it seriously as they know that it could otherwise impact on their grade.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that over the past 10 years the curriculum has “narrowed” to focus more on core academic subjects.
Mr Barton said: “This has led to some children – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds – doing less sport. There are some children who in Year Five and Year Six are withdrawn from PE lessons so they can do extra SPAG [spelling, punctuation and grammar] to prepare for sats.”
He said that while he welcomed the focus on sport, “the answer will not be more Ofsted inspections” but instead trusting teachers to free up time in the curriculum by having fewer academic tests.
He also raised concerns about how inspecting schools on their sport offering would work in practice.