These coaches are necessary because curriculum demands, as well as the finite number of sport specialisms held by any one individual, will always limit the degree to which a school can offer enough opportunities to create the “sporting nation” foreseen by Holmes. “We need the ability to offer the widest range of activities, to reach increased numbers of kids,” explains Gower. John Stewart, head of a north London primary school, and a fierce advocate of the benefits of school sport inside and outside the curriculum, thinks the school sport coordinator role is very limited. “If children have a positive experience at a young age, that’s going to be a good thing for their motivation as they get older,” he argues. But many insiders question whether, without a large amount of extra investment, the school sport partnership alone can radically improve primary PE teaching.

At the Physical Education Association of the UK, which represents most school PE teachers, the chief executive John Matthews sees the improvement of primary teachers’ confidence and expertise in teaching PE as a priority, if there’s to be any large-scale rise in participation among teenagers. Central to Holmes’s role will be visiting schools around the country – two visits a month for a year is the contractual obligation so far – to highlight how these partnerships are increasing the quantity and quality of school sport. She is likely to hear that the strategy has already had a positive effect. “The school sport partnerships have been a fantastic development,” says Paul Gower, head of PE at Fullbrook School, a mixed comprehensive in Surrey with 1,700 pupils. Gower has been able to expand the range of after-school clubs, and one of his PE staff, given the title of school sport coordinator, has been released from teaching at Fullbrook for two days a week to visit local primaries and help teachers there, almost none of whom are PE specialists, to improve their PE teaching. This is urgently needed, given that a recent Ofsted report found widespread instances of low quality PE teaching in primary schools, and frequent examples of cancelled PE lessons because of shortage of facilities or space on the timetable.

The funding was chiefly to support the setting up of hundreds of school sport partnerships – groups of schools tapping into the expertise of specialist sports colleges. There are now 411 of these partnerships, and the Government has promised that by the end of this year, the network will take in every primary and secondary school in England. My first task is to try to inspire and motivate as many young people as possible, so that sport becomes part of their day-to-day lives.” It’s a laudable aim, but how realistic is it? And what needs to happen to give her a chance of success? Four years ago, the Government acknowledged the decline in school sport that had taken place during the 1980s and 1990s by launching a new national strategy, backed by £1.5bn of taxpayers’ and Lottery money. But Holmes is nevertheless a powerful catch, with impeccable sporting credentials, and a big public profile. She proved her appeal effortlessly last week, when, within the space of 10 minutes in a school gym, she established a closer rapport with a group of 15- and 16-year-olds than the ministers could hope to achieve in 10 years.

But she knows that she needs to reach much, much further than the minority of British teenagers already hooked on sport. “I want to see real change,” she declared, “and for more children to take part in more activities. “The twist is that the audience is teased with the question of what has happened: Has he gone back in time? Is he in a coma? Is he mad? How can he get home?”. Badly behaved pupils are to be targeted on their way to and from school under new powers to punish unruly students, Jacqui Smith, the Schools minister, has announced. Teachers will also have the right to confiscate mobile phones if they are distracting children from learning, Ms Smith told a London conference organised by the Association of School and College Leaders yesterday.
Ms Smith said: “A culture of disrespect and failure to take responsibility will not be tolerated.

Even low-level disruption has a detrimental effect on everyone.”She told the conference that children must behave not just behind their desks but in the street and on buses and trains. The discipline proposals will attack the “can’t tell me, Miss” culture and place existing powers, which are “based on a confusing combination of common law and statute”, on a firmer footing.”If a parent asks, ‘What gives you the right to punish my child?’, a head should be able to point to a piece of law and say, ‘This does’. When the Bill becomes law you will be able to do just that,” Ms Smith said.Parents could be fined £50 if they fail to take responsibility for their children if they are excluded from school.. The majority of secondary school pupils are still taught in mixed-ability classes – despite a pledge by the Prime Minister eight years ago to increase setting in schools. Figures obtained from Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, show that only 38 per cent of lessons observed by inspectors involved setting – teaching pupils in different groups according to their ability. The figures for 2002-03, the last year for which it kept separate figures of lessons involving setting, also showed the percentage of lessons had been falling since the turn of the century (from 39 per cent to 38 per cent)..