The head of the sports charity applauded the partnership with locals to access the London independent school’s football packs.
Some public schools in the United Kingdom have severe issues with insufficient green space. According to the head of a sports charity seeking private schools to open up their playgrounds, children urgently need more green space that is easy to access.
Sports Fun 4 All, a charity sports club founded by Kieran Connolly, offers free football sessions for children in south London. The club collaborates with a local private school that grants access to one of their football pitches for his teams.
Connolly stated, “I think every child should have the same opportunity to play regardless if they go to a private or state school. It shouldn’t matter what their background is, they should all have the same opportunity.”
Connolly spent his early years in south-east London and played on the Catford Pitz pitches before they were acquired by St Dunstan’s College in 2011. He stated: “Pitz was a bit of a lifesaver for me, and I think many other young people. The gate was just open, you could go in and play. There was space for everybody. You’d go there, meet people, play matches, meet with your friends, spend hours there. They weren’t even locked, you just go there and play for free.”
An independent school that charges £ 22,599 a year initially reserved their green space for only their students.
Connolly, being determined, contracted councillors who helped him convince the school to allow the charity club to use its floodlit pitch once a week.
St Dunstan’s has granted Sports Fun 4 All free access for an hour every Monday after school since August 2023.
The school has also become more involved in some local community groups and schools in and around Catford. The school has collaborated with Chelsea FC, including hosting a regular tournament for local state schools.
The school has also collaborated with the Lewisham Young Leaders Academy (LYLA) Lewisham council and the Westside Young Leaders Academy to assist less privileged African, Caribbean, and dual-heritage children between the ages of 8 and 18. The pitch is available for primary schools to use during their sporting days.
Connolly’s team is growing in numbers daily, and it has entered the under-14s tournament this summer.
Connolly would love all children to have easy access to green spaces like those in private schools, even though he is grateful now that he can run his football sessions. “It would be better if we had way more floodlit facilities and green spaces for these young people to play sport and football. We’re not here to make the next professional footballer. What we have done is given hundreds of young people access to a free space every single week that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access.”
The college stated: “St Dunstan’s college believes in a broader educational purpose that supports the ongoing aspirations of the local community in Catford and the wider borough of Lewisham. St Dunstan’s works with local partners to provide life-enhancing opportunities to local people that seek to promote social mobility, engender wellbeing and improve communities.”
Nadia Shaikh, a Right to Roam campaigner, stated: “The most important formative fundamental green spaces for young people have always been those that they can access quickly and easily. We have a completely unequal distribution of those across the country.
“It’s the local green space that are your incidental engagement pieces with nature throughout your life, that are the kinds of access to nature that give you a sense of belonging and bring that daily sense of respite and peace and calm to your life.”
The general secretary of Open Spaces Society, Kate Ashbrook, stated: “It is vital for children’s health and wellbeing that they have free access to green spaces on their doorsteps. Not only is this an investment in our future, but it is a basic human right, and not something which they should have to pay for.”
