Olympic organisers and Labour accuse the government of failing to deliver the sporting legacy it had promised
The government's commitment to a post-Olympics sports legacy for young people was called into fresh question as it emerged that the only official report into current levels of sport in schools has been delayed by at least six months after its author was made redundant.
As Britain's medal-winning Olympians – including cyclist Bradley Wiggins, heptathlete Jessica Ennis and Paralympic swimmer Ellie Simmonds – are showered with New Year honours, there is growing suspicion that the coalition is trying to conceal the fall-off in sports provision in schools since it came to power.
The Observer has learned that a major report by Ofsted looking at the level of sporting activity in schools before and after the coalition came to office in 2010, which was originally due for publication last August, has been put back to the end of February at the earliest.
A spokeswoman for Ofsted said the delay was the result of a round of redundancies at Ofsted. She insisted that the report had not been completed and that its findings had not been handed to ministers in any form.
The hold-up has caused dismay in sporting circles, as it was expected to inform the development of post-Olympic policy at local and national level. It was also seized on by Labour as evidence that ministers do not want to reveal official figures showing that levels of sport in schools have fallen off dramatically since the education secretary, Michael Gove, abolished the system of School Sports Partnerships that had been boosting levels of activity under Labour.
The Ofsted report was also eagerly awaited, as it was due to be the only official report into sport in schools since Gove scrapped the separate schools sports survey that had previously monitored activity in the state sector.
It was expected that Ofsted's finding would feed into deliberations between ministers on a new school sports strategy, expected to be announced early in the new year to coincide with the six months' mark since the Olympics.
One senior figure who was heavily involved in delivering the 2012 Olympics said: "It is clear that this government is determined above all not to be proved wrong over what it did to sport in schools on entering office – and that is why this report is being thrown into the long grass and will, no doubt, never be published. We will never make progress if that kind of attitude prevails."
Stephen Twigg, the shadow education secretary, cited polling evidence from the voluntary sector suggesting that the number of pupils doing two hours of school sport had fallen from 90% in the later years of Labour to only half of all pupils now.
Twigg said: "Now we discover that an Ofsted report into school sport has been kicked into the long grass. After the abolition of the school sport survey, it looks like the government is once again trying to hide the true effect of their policies, like abolishing school sports partnerships. Parents have a right to know how much sport is happening at their school."
A recent poll of parents by Chance to Shine, an organisation that promotes the return of cricket to schools, found that, while over half of children had been doing more sport in some way since the Olympics, the level of activity had fallen off sharply in schools. Some 81% of parents surveyed said the amount of PE and games had either stayed the same or been reduced in their children's schools since the Olympics.
During the Olympics, David Cameron said he was determined to provide a lasting legacy for sport in state schools and pledged that he would ensure that sport was made compulsory within the revised national curriculum in state schools. Sceptics have pointed out, however, that the promise will not cover the growing number of primaries that are becoming academies, as academies are not bound by the national curriculum.
It is understood that Gove is resisting any new policy that would force headteachers to commit to delivering specific numbers of hours of sport, or specific sums of money to it, because such a prescriptive approach conflicts with his view that heads should be left to decide their own priorities. But others, including health secretary Jeremy Hunt, aware of rising obesity levels among primary school children, are keen to see specific binding policies put in place to show the government has delivered an identifiable policy legacy. A government spokesperson said: "We are working on a variety of measures to improve school sport as part of the Olympic and Paralympic legacy. We will announce our plans in due course."