The lunchtime queue inside CJ's Fish Bar comprised two mechanics and a young mother cramming a carrier bag with white-wrapped supplies for her brood. In behind them slipped five boys in navy blue school uniforms, who began rummaging through their pockets for the 75p needed for today's midday meal. Minutes later, the teenagers were munching their bags of chips as they shuffled back the 150 yards through the narrow red-bricked streets to nearby Wortley High School.
In the car park that doubles as the school's playground, many of the 950 pupils were standing around chatting, huddled together to avoid the rain sweeping in from the Pennines. A few younger ones were skipping, but only a few. The general lack of movement was striking, the scene in this Leeds secondary school a step removed from the anarchic whirl of running, chasing and kicking which the lunchtime bell traditionally unleashes.
These are just the outward signs of the huge problems which Ministers face in trying to stop the slide of Britain's school pupils towards inactivity, obesity and uninterest in sport. Without radical action, today's young people will turn into the fattest, unfittest, most unhealthy generation we have produced.
This comprehensive in a tough part of the city embodies the growing nationwide epidemic. Concern over fitness levels among Wortley's pupils has become so acute that its head of physical education, Julien Gittens, conducted tests to measure their levels of cardio-vascular fitness. The results were alarming.
Up to 30 per cent of some classes scored a fitness rating of two or three out of a possible total of 23. The pupils were so unfit they could barely run 100 metres comfortably.
It is no coincidence that a recent survey into sport participation among Wortley's pupils found that a massive 81 per cent of girls do not attend any extra-curricular activities, while two-thirds of boys remain uninterested.
For Wortley, read schools up and down the country. Young people's behaviour is changing and with it their health, fitness and bodies - for the worse. Department of Health figures show that between 1995 and 2001, the weight of the average English 13-year-old girl rose from 7st 7lbs to 8st 1lb, while the average 15-year-old boy went from 9st 2lbs to 9st 6lbs. Official figures show that 8.5 per cent of six-year-olds and 15 per cent of 15-year-olds are now obese. School-age children now spend on average 11.4 hours a week watching television, videos or DVDs but just 8.1 hours doing sport. The number of pupils walking to school has fallen to one in five.
Wortley is the sixth school at which headteacher Tudor Griffiths has taught, and the 38-year-old has noticed a disturbing pattern: Britain's schoolchildren are getting larger. Griffiths, an amateur rugby referee, appreciates the value of fitness. He firmly believes that a key reason for what Ministers call the ticking timebomb of ill-health related to rising inactivity is the dramatic decline in the amount of sport and PE undertaken by Britain's schoolchildren.
'Our problems with school sport can be traced back to the mid-Eighties when a lot of goodwill among teachers was surrendered as a result of the industrial disputes,' says Griffiths. 'Many teachers stopped giving up their time to supervise pupils' sports.' Years of under-investment in facilities and the pressures of a packed curriculum have contributed to the damage, he added.
Perhaps Wortley's pupils cannot be blamed for their inactivity. There is no football, rugby or cricket pitch, no tennis court, no swimming pool and no sports hall. The best it can muster is a cramped exam hall that doubles as a gym which is too small even to stage a five-a-side-football match.
Most of Wortley High's other sporting activities occur off-site. Straggling lines of pupils can be seen most days traipsing nearly a mile and a half to the nearest sports centre. The school spends thousands of pounds a year it can ill afford on hiring facilities and getting pupils there, such as £1,200 transporting everyone to South Leeds Stadium for the annual sports day. Given such obstacles, it's no surprise that Wortley High does not hit the Government's modest target that every pupil should receive two hours' physical education a week.
It's 7.45 in the morning and the sound of table tennis balls being knocked around fills the assembly hall at Ernest Bevin Sports College in Tooting, south London. The fact that 25 boys have come to play ping pong a full hour before lessons begin shows that the battle against inactivity has not been lost everywhere.
Education Secretary Charles Clarke says that the Government was bequeathed most of these problems when it took office in 1997, and that the steep fall in school sport occurred during its predecessors' 18 years in office. Ernest Bevin is part of Labour's attempt to turn back the tide. It is one of 231 specialist sports colleges created to put the subject at the heart of the curriculum.
At Ernest Bevin, pupils do between two and three hours of PE a week. There is a flourishing timetable of pre-school, after-school and lunchtime sport, in which 60 per cent of pupils take part. Some teachers voluntarily supervise these sessions: geography master Ray Nash gives up two afternoons a week and Sunday mornings to teach lacrosse or take the team to play rival schools.
However, the four teachers who come in early to take the 7.45am daily table tennis and swimming classes are paid £15 an hour for doing so out of the extra £125 per pupil which this Tooting comprehensive receives as a specialist school. It has two gyms, an indoor swimming pool and access to a playing field just five minutes' walk away. All this has helped increase the amount of sport done by Ernest Bevin's 1,100 boys from 7 per cent to 10 per cent of curriculum time.
School principal Mike Chivers explains that Ernest Bevin's ethos is 'achievement through sport'. Since it became a sports college in 2000, the proportion of pupils getting five GCSE passes has risen from 18 per cent to 60 per cent. Last year it was the third most improved school in England, based on GCSE results. 'Our pupils' success underlines our belief that if students succeed at sport, they are more likely to be successful in other areas,' said Chivers. 'The emphasis on sport has also helped improve aspects of school life such as attendance, punctuality and attitudes to staff.'
Things could be better, though. Budget cuts of £200,000 mean that when Andy Garside, the school's inspirational head of football and one of its eight PE staff, left this summer, he was not replaced. And while Ministers have relied on Lottery money as one of the main ways of improving school sports facilities, Ernest Bevin's bid for £3.5m to build a new sports hall failed because there was not enough to go round.
'Given the popularity of sedentary activities such as watching television and playing computer games, the growing number of children who get to school by vehicle and the reluctance of parents to let their offspring stay out unattended after school, school sport has never been more important,' says Chivers. Yet progress in tackling inactivity is slow.
The Department for Education and Science admits that, while it would like every pupil to get two hours of sport a week, pitifully low numbers actually do. Just 25 per cent of five- to seven-year-olds, 40 per cent of seven- to 11-year-olds and 33 per cent of 11- to 16-year-olds get the recommended dose.
The Government points to the £686m of Lottery money allocated to improve facilities, and the £459m being spent on initiatives to help rebuild the amount of pupil activity and primary link teachers to help youngsters acquire physical literacy. But few believe it is enough.
Back at Wortley High, Tudor Griffiths is doing what he can in the fight against obesity. He has made the food in the school canteen less stodgy and more nutritious. But he is a pragmatist. Chips had to be kept on the menu, or the queue at CJ's Fish Bar would have grown even longer.
Bad sports
Only a quarter of five to seven-year-olds, 40 per cent of seven to 11-year-olds and a third of 11 to 16-year-olds get the recommended two hours of school sport every week.
18 per cent of pupils do not play sport regularly at school; 58 per cent do little sport out of school hours.
One in five children cannot swim 25 metres by the time they leave primary school.
39 per cent of teachers say sports facilities at their schools are 'inadequate'.
Up to 40 per cent of pupils dislike taking part in sport at school because of bad weather, getting cold and wet or ending up hot and sweaty.
Size matters
The rate of child obesity is soaring in Britain. Today, one in every 12 six-year-olds and one in seven 15-year-olds is obese.
Around half a million children are more than 20 per cent over their ideal weight.
Between 1995 and 2001, the average weight of a 13-year-old girl went up from 7st 7lbs to 8st 2lbs. For the average 15-year-old boy, the weight rose from 9st 1lbs to 9st 9lbs.
A six-year-old child who is seriously overweight has a 95 per cent chance of being an obese adult.
The first cases of white teenagers with type II diabetes, triggered by being very overweight, were seen in Britain last year.
