Lack of funding could force the closure of Britain’s largest sports event which brings together disabled and non-disabled athletes.
The annual School Sports Championship, which was started just four years ago when the Paralympics were handed over to London, brings together 2500 school children from across Hackney each July.
Its inclusive sports have become so popular that several schools have brought in coaches to teach them to disabled and non-disabled pupils. But there are fears that the competition will lose its funding when its sponsor, the Learning Trust, transfers to Hackney council later this year.
In addition, there is rising concern that, once the glare of the publicity brought on by the Olympics leaves the borough, the council will no longer be as prepared to fund inclusive sports activities.
Championship organiser Alan Walsh, 50, said: “The Learning Trust has been wonderful. This should be a really significant Olympic legacy, but there’s a possibility that what’s left behind after the summer will not amount to very much.
“It’s very difficult to say what the legacy will be given the financial crisis that is going on and the way the government is dealing with it.”
Mr Walsh, a former research fellow at the University of East London and author of a GLA report on Olympic legacies, said: “I hope the council will decide to continue after this summer. But there is no past history of Paralympic legacy. In reality it’s all smoke and mirrors.”
Keith Clarke, 48, is a sports coordinator at Seabright Primary in Haggerston. His school gets free coaching in Paralympic sports through the Learning Trust.
He commented: “I think all the free lessons that we have had will be going. So much has been taken away from school sports already.
“The School Sports Championship is brilliant. The school I’m in now doesn’t have a sports day, it has a Paralympic sports day.
“We play wheelchair basketball and archery sitting down as free sessions through the Championship.
“We have children with disabilities at the school, and not all of them were accepted straight away but now everybody is one. These sports have brought everybody together.”
The Championship started in 2008 with a small event planned to mark the Paralympic handover from Beijing. “One email inviting 15 schools grew into 37 wanting to take part in a couple of hours,” Mr. Walsh explained.
Funding from the Learning Trust made it possible to hold the meeting annually and it has grown into the UK’s largest inclusive sports event.
The Championship also played a pivotal role in winning coveted Beacon status for Hackney, which secured the council extra funding as one of the boroughs which successfully encouraged residents to get active before the Games.
This funding does not help pay for the Championship, which is reliant on the Learning Trust for support.
A Hackney council spokeswoman said any decision over funding would be down to the Learning Trust, which will become the council’s education department after the merger in July.
A spokeswoman for the Learning Trust said: “Funding has been allocated in the 2012-13 budget for the sports championships which will take place this July. Our 2013-14 budget has not yet been decided as we do not yet have our funding settlement for 2013-2014 from the DfE. We won’t know what we have funding for until the end of this year.”
