To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many (a) females and (b) males play competitive sport in schools in (i) Staffordshire and (ii) England. (173256)

These data have not been collected centrally. The annual School Sport Survey collects data relating to PE and School Sport at a school, rather than pupil level.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what assessment he has made of the implications of the recent data published by the NHS Information Centre on childhood obesity for the assessment of performance against the Government's relevant targets; and what impact these data have had on the strategy for school sport. (190434)

[holding answer 29 February 2008]: The NHS Information Centre recently published the results of the National Child Measurement Programme for the 2006-07 school year. The main purpose of the programme is to inform trend analysis and the effective development, planning and delivery of children's services at national and local levels. The NCMP data also underpin the local indicators in both the national indicator set for local authorities and the vital signs indicators for primary care trusts. Guidance has been issued to local areas on how they can use NCMP data to inform goal setting for these child obesity indicators. The national PSA target will be monitored through the Health Survey for England.

The NCMP is one of the largest collections of child height and weight data in the world and we are keen to ensure effective use of the data gathered, while ensuring the confidentiality of individual children who participated, including to inform the strategy for school sport. Within this constraint, the national anonymised dataset has already been made available to public health observatories to enable more detailed regional and local data analysis, including at school level.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (1) how many children meeting the Government’s two hours of high quality sport and physical education targets are (a) overweight and (b) obese; (190435)

[holding answer 29 February 2008]: The annual school sport survey collects data relating to the percentage of 5 to16-year-olds who take part in at least two hours high quality PE and sport in a typical week. The survey is carried out on behalf of the Department by TNS, an independent research company who were awarded the contract to run the survey after a competitive procurement exercise.

The survey does not collect data on take up of two hours PE and sport by overweight or obese children.

Copies of the results of the latest survey have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.