The Olympics were supposed to give competitive sport in schools a huge boost. But government cuts mean that children are now doing less than before

The man and boy raise their weapons in salute, before closing to engage. They get each other's measure for a few seconds before the child darts at the man's chest with the tip of his black plastic foil. It's a neatly executed lunge. Under soft yellow light in a primary school hall in Tower Hamlets, east London, eight boys and a girl are learning to fence. Inevitably, there are giggles as the masks go on, and the children have to be discouraged from slashing away at each other's foils like pirates with cutlasses. Their coach, Hijrat Popal, dissuades them from this waste of energy. He urges them to go in for the kill with an attacking move instead. He makes them pay attention to their footwork, and the children begin to learn this sport's lessons; poise, co-ordination, agility.

As London prepares to host the Olympic Games, it would be cheering to say that scenes like this are being repeated in schools across the country. But they aren't. School sport is suffering. Competitions are being cancelled. After-school clubs are being scrapped. PE teachers are receiving less training. And the government's austerity measures are being blamed.

One of education secretary Michael Gove's most unpopular acts was to abolish the national network of school sport partnerships. These saw groups of schools working together to increase the quality and range of sport on offer to children. In each one, a secondary school PE teacher was given two days a week to act as a co-ordinator while a teacher in each of the primary schools was paid to receive extra training in PE and sport.

An outcry from teachers and athletes forced the education secretary to keep the scheme going until last summer. Gove agreed to a further concession – to carry on providing money to release a secondary school teacher for one day a week. In some parts of the country, schools have pooled resources to sustain these partnerships, freeing up teachers and employing coaches to run sports sessions. That has happened in Tower Hamlets. Elsewhere, school sport is feeling the pinch.

Simon Spiers, headteacher of King Alfred's specialist sports college in Wantage, Oxfordshire, says: "In areas where primary and secondary school heads believe it's important, they're funding it. If not, they're not. We're into our first year of that, so the differences aren't that large. But if this continues, we'll see a big disparity."

It is a deeply sensitive subject for the government. And not just for the usual reasons that school sport matters – the fact that one in five children leaves primary school obese, or that exercise improves behaviour and attention. One of the pledges that helped win the Olympic Games for London was a promise to "inspire young people around the world to choose sport". The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, whose cabinet brief includes the Olympics, declared last year: "I can sum up our sports policy in three words: more competitive sport."

The government has created a new school games tournament – sponsored by Sainsbury's – with a national final taking place in the Olympic Park, in May. Around 12,000 schools, both state and private, are now signed up for this, a government spokesman says. To put that in perspective, there are around 20,000 state schools in England.

It is hard to be precise about the impact of the cuts because, at the same time ministers scrapped the sport partnerships, they got rid of the annual survey that collected information about every pupil. But when you speak to headteachers and surviving school sport co-ordinators it becomes clear that – ironically, perhaps – it is competition between schools that is suffering the most.

Jo Marston stayed on as school sport co-ordinator in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, after Gove pulled the financial plug because the schools in her area collaborated to keep a sport partnership going. Now she spends three days a week organising school games and the rest of the time offering teachers guidance on coaching.

"I've already noticed there is much less attendance at events," Marston says. "We're probably working at about 50%-75% attendance. It's because schools haven't got the money for transport to go out and play competitions, and they can't release the staff because they don't have the money to pay for supply, to take a class teacher away from directly teaching for a competition. That's hit us really hard."

Marston wants to make it clear that she's not a whinger. In fact, she feels privileged that her local schools have pitched together to keep some competition going, and believes things are worse elsewhere. Still, the fact that teachers cannot be released during the day means a lot of competition is now taking place after school hours. And some schools have just dropped out.

"I had two aquasplash [swimming and other aquatic skills] competitions last week with four schools each. We've done it before with nine or 10 schools. We've had to cancel some competitions because nobody wanted to enter them. I've had three lots of sportshall [indoor] athletics I have had to cancel because nobody entered.

"This is what the government is looking to increase, and they've put us in a position where we aren't able to do that. We're doing a lot of virtual leagues, where the school gives me the results and I put them on the website, It's ridiculous – the thing we're trying to focus on and increase, and they take away the resources to be able to do that."

She describes the years of spending under Labour as "halcyon days", when schools – especially primaries – were introduced to a breadth and depth of competition they had never seen before. "Primary schools played football and netball – now they do aquasplash, fun runs, sportshall athletics, Quicksticks hockey." The Daily Mail has lampooned this diversity as schools ditching traditional sports for "cheerleading, yoga and circus skills", echoing the coalition's criticism that participation in sports such as rugby, hockey and netball fell under the last government.

But less conventional sports often act as a bridge to more familiar team games. Between 2003 and 2010, the number of secondary school children playing two hours or more of sport a week rose from 20% to 85%.

Schools in Marston's part of North Yorkshire are weathering the cuts with "triangular" fixtures – where three school sides play at the same event. This obviously means the children are not playing for as long as they would at a normal event. Marston has also arranged fixtures very close together so school teams can walk to each other's grounds rather than having to hire buses.

But small schools are struggling. "It's no longer equitable. Some schools with 23 pupils don't have the resources to go out to competition. If you've got a big school with 420 pupils, quite a big workforce, [you're] able to leave school and take the children. When you're in a rural area, it's the small schools that suffer."

It is the same story on the Lancashire coast, where schools have been forced to abandon a winter cross-country league. Attendance is down at competitive events, says Matt Hilton, co-ordinator for the Wyre and Fylde school sports network. As in North Yorkshire, this partnership is being sustained by local schools clubbing together. But money is much tighter now.

"We're having to work differently because of the times that we're in," says Hilton. He reels off a list. There isn't the money for "freeing up teachers, hiring facilities, purchasing medal certificates, hiring equipment". He cites the example of a recent indoor athletics competition in which 28 local primaries took part. Before the cuts, around 35 schools would have entered.

Parents are increasingly being asked to dip into their pockets. Gavin Storey, headteacher of Cullercoats primary school, in Tyne and Wear, has cancelled after-school clubs in badminton and dance because his school cannot afford external teachers. Instead, some of his staff volunteer to run after-hours football and aerobics sessions, while parents pay £2 a class for a gymnastics club.

Storey says: "I'm very conscious of the economic climate. We don't want to have extra clubs because I've got to ask parents to contribute to that, and people are struggling with the basic cost of household utilities, food etc." Schools in his neighbourhood are still running competitions, but they have contracted. "A hockey competition that used to go on to a regional level is now just for local schools – there's no movement on to the county and regional level. But you want competition for some of your elite teams. The government wants more competition – where is the competition for that elite level?"

Everyone you speak to agrees that primary schools are worse off than secondaries. They rely on secondary schools with their specialist staff to provide a wider range of activity for their children.

The Department for Education has made £32.5m available this year to release secondary school sports teachers for one day a week to work with primary schools. But that money runs out next year, and because it isn't ring-fenced, hard-pressed headteachers are tempted to spend it on other priorities.

Around 80% of all secondary schools in England are signed up to the coalition's School Games, a government spokesman says. But less than half (45%) of the country's primary schools are. It is a common fear that without support from secondary school colleagues, primary school PE teachers will stick to the safest options and avoid more hazardous activities such as gymnastics or dance. In primary schools, teachers have to range across subjects. That limits the amount of time they have to prepare for PE when they do their postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) courses.

Lorraine Everard, sports strategy manager for a partnership of 54 Sussex schools, says: "If primary school teachers have spent more than two weeks of their time training on PE they have done well. Some of them have done three days [PE training] in the whole of their [PGCE] course. Gymnastics, for example. They're not confident in teaching it, therefore they won't teach it well or will avoid it completely."

Teachers are nervous of activities such as gymnastics not just because of the risk of injury, but because it requires them to hold children.

Everard says: "It could go back to the situation we had 10 years ago, where new staff coming in are not doing PE because they don't feel confident. That might not be manifesting itself right at the moment, but increasingly it will."

The decline of school sport is particularly dismaying because in many parts of the country, this is the only way children get a taste for sport. In Tower Hamlets, 80% of children never do sport outside school, says Chris Willetts, manager of the borough's school sport partnership. "It's a mix of cultural factors – and a lack of spaces, a lack of clubs. This is a very densely populated borough."

Tower Hamlets is an inner-city neighbourhood; many of its schools are housed in dishevelled but still handsome Victorian brick buildings. But it is also a crowded landscape in which the dominant note is concrete grey. The streets are busy with traffic and there isn't a single blade of grass on any of the borough's school playgrounds. It was once a "real backwater" for school sport, Willetts says. Now there is a remarkable spread of sporting activities on offer here.

On a recent winter's afternoon, two girls were being taught to kayak on dry land. The girls, pupils at Virginia primary in Bethnal Green, perch on machines that resemble rowing equipment. But instead of the contraction and extension of sculls, they manipulate a pole that mimics the dipping motion of a paddle. Meanwhile, the rest of the class toss balls to each other to build up their core strength, or use broomsticks as mock-paddles. The most adept paddlers will get a taste of the real thing when they go kayaking on Shadwell Basin, part of London docks, this summer.

A few streets away, a game of indoor cricket is under way at Old Palace primary school. Seven boys in burgundy sweaters play with a plastic bat and tennis ball. The level of talent on display is variable. A few of the boys knock the tennis ball easily out to the boundary – in this case, that's the wall of the school canteen. Others swing wildly and whack themselves "out" on the plastic stumps. The coach isn't being a stickler for the rules. Instead these boys, aged between seven and eight, are being taught the basics of the game – how to bowl, bat and field.

Sport can be a ticket out of a tough neighbourhood. That doesn't just apply to elite performers who can win sponsorship. In Tower Hamlets, the sports partnership takes children out to Blackheath cricket club every summer where they mix with boys from Dulwich College, the south-London private school. The idea is that sport can be a passport to success in later life – a networking tool.

"They learn to handle themselves in certain social circumstances a bit better because of it," Willetts says. "It can be difficult to get some of them to open up a little bit, just through lack of confidence. There are a lot of professional people who play [at the cricket club] – doctors, teachers, lawyers, bankers. Our kids are playing with them. It's good for aspiration."

Few doubt that the Olympic Games coming to London this year is inspiring a burst of creativity and enthusiasm for sport in Britain's schools. The fear is over what comes next. While ministers boast about an Olympic legacy, the risk is that sport in schools is withering away so fast that a future generation of potential Olympians will be blighted.

Young boys are often 'reluctant readers', so to help meet the government's aim to get more children reading, here is a Top 10 of books for boys, as chosen by expert Ellen Ainsworth

On Tuesday, the government announced its plan to get more children reading. It takes the form of a competition, aimed at seven- to 12-year-olds and slated to kick off in September, that will reward the young readers who devour the most books: the clear intention, as schools minister Nick Gibb put it, is "to give a competitive spur to reluctant readers".

Both boys and girls will be eligible, but as boys make up the majority of these "reluctant readers" – one in 10 British boys are now leaving primary school with the reading-age of a seven-year-old – Gibb added that he hoped boys in particular would be inspired "by a bit of healthy competition".

So which books should the nation's boys be reading if they want to get a headstart? Here's a handy guide to the 10 best books for boys aged seven to 12, chosen with the help of Ellen Ainsworth, a retired children's librarian and mother of two grownup sons who has more than 33 years' experience of getting boys reading.

1. Alex Rider Anthony Horowitz's series about a 14-year-old boy recruited by the British secret service has proved phenomenally popular: there are nine novels, from 2000's Stormbreaker to Scorpia Rising, released last March, suitable for readers aged around 10 and over; a number of spinoff short-story collections; a film; and a video game. "Definitely my No 1," says Ainsworth.

2. Harry Potter No list would be complete without JK Rowling's much-loved novels about a teenage wizard battling the evil Voldemort, while getting to grips with Quidditch, strange spells and first love. Their addictive qualities are likely to have young boys (and girls, of course) wanting to devour all seven in a row, quickly putting them ahead in the competition.

3. Young Bond Covering similar ground to Alex Rider, Charlie Higson's books – suitable for ages 10 and over — act as a compelling prequel to Ian Fleming's Bond series: here, we meet Bond as a 13-year-old at Eton in the 1930s. "007 should certainly give Harry a run for his money" was the verdict of Observer associate editor Robert McCrum on the second book, Blood Fever.

4. Horrid Henry Younger boys will love Francesca Simon's series about a perpetually naughty young boy and his butter-wouldn't-melt brother, Perfect Peter. Though unpopular in Simon's native US, over here we might even be permitted to call them a phenomenon: 20 books, a number of joke books, a series for early readers, a film, a stage show and a CITV cartoon series.

5. Flat Stanley This classic children's book, written in 1964 by Jeff Brown, tells the decidedly surreal tale of a boy named Stanley Lambchop who is flattened in the night by a collapsed pin-board. He makes the best of the situation by using his newly flattened state to slide into locked rooms, be used as a kite, and even posted in a letterbox. "A lot of boys of seven to nine are still not reading very well," Ainsworth says. "This book is really likely to engage them."

6. Artemis Fowl The anti-hero of Irish author Eoin Colfer's seven novels (the last is due out this summer) is like the Blofeld to Higson's Bond: a teenage criminal mastermind named Artemis Fowl II. "This is in the solid nine-12 years category," says Ainsworth.

7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Boys aged seven and up will relate to American author Jeff Kinney's tales about a hopelessly uncool boy named Gregory. There are six books in the series, which originated on the website FunBrain.com, where it scored 20m hits over five years. "My own boys loved these books," Ainsworth says.

8. Captain Underpants In Dav Pilkey's series of amusingly illustrated novels, two primary-school boys accidentally hypnotise their headteacher, turning him into the eponymous superhero. Exuberant fun for younger boys.

9. The Cherub series Bestselling author Robert Muchamore became the subject of controversy last October, when a north London junior school cancelled his scheduled visit, citing a number of complaints from parents about the challenging subject matter of his books about a group of orphaned teenage spies (anyone sensing a pattern here?). "I always call it the EastEnders test – that broadly speaking nothing happens in my books that doesn't happen in an episode of EastEnders," Muchamore said in response.

10. Holes Louis Sachar's award-winning 1998 novel about a 13-year-old boy named Stanley Yelnats, sent to the juvenile detention centre Camp Green Lake after being wrongly accused of stealing a pair of shoes, will appeal to boys of 10 and over.

Can you do better? What's your essential read to win over reluctant boys?

Commons education committee expected to veto appointment of Prof Les Ebdon, a critic of higher university fees

The business secretary, Vince Cable, is expected to be overruled by an influential Commons committee over the appointment of a new university access tsar.

Cable has endorsed Prof Les Ebdon, an advocate of new universities and a critic of higher fees, for the role of director of the higher education access watchdog – the Office for Fair Access.

The watchdog's current director, Sir Martin Harris, is stepping down.

Ebdon, vice-chancellor of Bedfordshire University and chair of a lobby group for new universities called -Million+, wants to impose large fines on universities that do not take sufficient numbers of disadvantaged students. He has also advocated what he has called a "nuclear option" of forbidding them from charging maximum fees of £9,000 a year.

But Tory MPs on the business, innovation and skills select committee, including the chair, Graham Stuart, are expected to veto his appointment at midday on Wednesday.

Private schools and the country's 20 leading research universities are thought to have lobbied against Ebdon's appointment.

Ebdon attended a pre-appointment hearing before MPs last week.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, is said to be against Ebdon getting the role, while David Willetts, the universities minister, is in favour of his appointment.

Cable and other Lib Dems are thought to believe that Ebdon would improve social mobility and fairness in university admissions.

The government could overrule the MPs if they do not endorse Ebdon, or they could start the recruitment process from scratch – a more likely option.

Ebdon has said universities should be more flexible by admitting students with lower grades if they have attended low-performing schools – something most, but not all, institutions do.

Data shows the poorest 40% of students are seven times less likely to be admitted to the 20 most prestigious universities than the richest 10%.

• This article was amended on 8 February 2012. The original referred to Tory MPs on the education select committee. This has been corrected.

The White House science fair launches with a bang on Tuesday as Barack Obama shoots marshmallows at the wall in the state dining room

Lord Coe vowed the London Olympics would connect young people with the inspirational power of the Games, but there are now real fears this goal will not be realised

Around two and a half months before the cream of the world's athletes parade around the track at the opening ceremony of the London Games, a rather more low-key event will mark a new phase in the battle to secure an Olympic legacy – or at least the perception of one.

The School Games, the brainchild of the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is – depending on who you ask and their political persuasion – either a bold attempt to reinvigorate competitive school sport using London 2012 as a catalyst or a desperate attempt to distract from deep spending cuts that risk putting any hope for a meaningful legacy at risk.

The finals, which will take place in the Olympic Park between 6 and 9 May, are the climax of four levels of intra- and inter-school competition that Hunt insists will help deliver on the legacy promises made by Lord Coe in Singapore.

Then, Coe vowed: "We can no longer take it for granted that young people will choose sport. Some may lack the facilities. Or the coaches and role models to teach them. Others, in an age of 24-hour entertainment and instant fame, may simply lack the desire. We are determined a London Games will address that challenge. So London's vision is to reach young people around the world. To connect them with the inspirational power of the Games. So they are inspired to choose sport."

As Guardian education editor Jeevan Vasagar writes today, there are now very real fears that Coe's electrifying words will result in little meaningful change. The background is complex and controversial, marked by political and ideological rows and turf wars.

In 2010 the education secretary, Michael Gove, resolved to remove the £162m ringfenced funding for a network of school sports partnerships that had raised the number of schoolchildren engaged in two hours or more of sport per week from 25% in 2002 to more than 90% by 2010.

Following a feisty debate in the Commons (during which the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, suggested the cuts were Gove's revenge for years of misery on the playing fields) and a furious rearguard action from teachers, pupils and athletes, some of the money was reinstated. But it was less a U-turn and more a 90-degree turn.

Sue Campbell, the redoubtable chair of the Youth Sport Trust, and her new chief executive, John Steele, are putting a brave face on the new strategy. Campbell says it can be the start of a renaissance for competitive school sport.

But while a total of £153m will be going into the School Games over the next four years – gathered from a variety of sources and including £10m of sponsorship from Sainsbury's – it doesn't make up for what has been lost.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, there was also a pitched battle for control of the School Games themselves. Lord Moynihan, the British Olympic Association chairman, thought that its remit after the Games could usefully extend to running a school Olympics. But Hunt said on Monday that the BOA wanted complete control, which wasn't on the table. So the name was changed to the School Games and the BOA sidelined.

Hunt also lauded the fact that half of all schools had signed up. By the same token, that means that half of schools haven't – in London the total is only 42%.

The risk is that we will be left with a patchwork of provision between those schools that understand the wider value of sport and those that don't – exactly what the original strategy was introduced to combat. There is no such hesitation at private schools which pour their considerable funds into top-class sporting facilities and as a result have punched well above their weight at recent Games, supplying half of all Britain's medallists.

Hunt deserves praise for doing what he can with limited resources to try to minimise the effect of the cuts imposed by Gove and he loyally defends the actions of his colleague.

But it is hard to see how sacking 450 people, then re-employing the majority of them on fewer hours with a re-badged job title and simultaneously cutting the primary school provision that could instil the very "sport for life" attitude that Hunt's rhetoric promises can be seen as a step forward.

For all the economic gloom, and the inevitable cuts, the London Games should have been a moment to definitively rebalance Britain's relationship with sport and exercise – beginning in schools, and particularly in primary schools.

Ministers from all departments are keen to pay lip service to sport's role as a social tool – inspiring otherwise hard to reach children, raising academic achievement and self-esteem. But not enough of them are willing to find the means. This is difficult stuff and the societal and cultural barriers are immense. But that does not mean the original aim – to use the Olympics to catalyse a lasting change in sports policy and the amount we invest in it – was wrong.

For all the money poured into school sport by the last Labour government when times were good, they arguably didn't do enough to hardwire investment in sport and exercise into bigger Whitehall departments such as health, education and the Home Office.

Now the money they did provide is leaking away. Nor does there seem much clarity on how progress will be measured – Hunt talks vaguely of instilling the habit of "sport for life" and measuring progress at 16, 18 and 21. Which means it will be years before we know if the strategy works.

There are other pressing concerns. Cuts to local authority budgets will inevitably impact on facilities, and the effects are just starting to be felt. Meanwhile, planning laws are being changed in a way that has raised fears about the impact on playing fields.

Hunt spoke at a briefing this week of wanting to follow the example of continental Europe and create community sports clubs of the kind that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in the Netherlands, Germany or France. That is a laudable aim, but is hard to see how the mishmash of policies and initiatives – individually impressive as some of them are – that has been cobbled together to assuage concerns over the Olympic legacy can achieve it. Hunt's enthusiasm seems genuine, but it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the government as a whole increasingly views the Games as a month-long morale-boosting advert for Britain rather than a driver of lasting change.

Coe, loyally, insists that the coalition is delivering on his promises by reinvigorating competitive sport. But others are less sure – from opposite sides of the political divide both Tessa Jowell and Moynihan have expressed confidence in the regeneration vision for east London and Team GB's medal hopes but flagged up school sport as an area of grave concern.

The danger is that after the Games, Britain's attitude to sport will remain broadly unchanged – world-class at watching it, and sometimes at practising it at the elite end, but with a population largely happy to take part from the comfort of their sofa with a big bowl of crisps.

Stadium wrap leaves a little to be designed

London 2012 organisers are close to unveiling the design for the contentious wrap that will surround the stadium at Games-time, but Damien Hirst and other big-name British artists who were initially approached will not be involved.

The £7m wrap that will surround the main stadium during the Games is at the centre of protests from MPs and human rights groups over the fact it is being paid for by Dow, the chemicals giant which they claim still has outstanding liabilities relating to the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India.

Initial plans for the 1km wrap were scrapped during the government's comprehensive spending review as the £9.3bn Olympics project shared some of the pain of widespread spending cuts, but revived when a commercial sponsor was found.

However, the original designs for the wrap were abandoned and a push to find a new designer was launched. Hirst and other British artists were approached but it is understood that talks went no further than preliminary conversations.

Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP who has called for a parliamentary review of the decision to back Dow, told the Guardian that any prominent British artists would be damaged by their association with the wrap.

"I can't imagine the artistic community of the UK feeling that Dow Chemical, with all its history, is a sponsor they particularly want to associate themselves with. I would be gobsmacked if any eminent British artist decided that what they wanted to do was associate themselves with the Bhopal tragedy."

Sir Humphrey doesn't take the train

Harassed civil servants across Whitehall were this week expected to "reroute and remode" their journeys to work in order to practise for Games-time. The transport secretary, Justine Greening, has already promised that her department will achieve a decrease of 50% in normal traffic by working from home and travelling at different times. Games organisers are relying on an average reduction of 30% among London commuters to avoid transport chaos. Posters pinned up around the DCMS building urged staff to partake in the week-long rehearsal. And Ian Watmore, the former FA chief executive who is now leading a Whitehall cost-cutting drive, tweeted: "This week we are practising for the Olympics by working out of London or on flexible shifts. Today I'm heading to Norwich from Manchester."