The figures look good.

There, in black and white, you have it – more schoolchildren are spending more time in the gym and on the playing fields.

It was about five years ago that the Government finally realised sport in schools is essential and set about pulling it back from a decade in the wilderness.

Now the Department for Children, Schools and Families is rubbing its hands with glee.

It is hitting its “participation target” – and some. Those flexing the numbers were determined to get pupils two hours of sport and PE by 2007-08. Children’s Secretary Ed Balls wanted 85 per cent. He got 90 per cent.

But Mr Balls wants more. The new target is five hours by 2011 – two hours in school, three out. Or, as he succinctly put it, he expects schools, sports clubs and parents to “raise their game”.

Which is all very well, but, as Phil Coleman pointed out, sport and PE still come a long way behind English, maths and science on school curriculums.

Mr Coleman, one-time central defender for Millwall and Colchester United, is faculty manager for PE and sport at Brightlingsea’s Colne Community School and College. He has a degree in sport and teacher training and, before joining Colne, was an instructor in football and rugby at the Gilberd School in Colchester. For him, sport is as important as any of the three Rs.

“The Government wants schools and sports clubs to give more hours to young people for sport – great,” he said. “But, in schools, there are only 25 hours a week on the timetable. English, maths and science take most of those hours because that is what the Government says has to happen.

“When it comes to sport, we are constantly fighting Government numeracy and literacy directives, and we still are.”

Not that he thinks numeracy and literacy shouldn’t be the main men. But, as far as he is concerned, sport should be up there with them.

“If the Government wants every single pupil to have more time playing sport, then it must show us how to free up more of the timetable,” he said.

“More PE means something else has got to give.”

Colne has special college status. This means more funding for sport, and more sports staff. Currently, there are 18 – 12 full-time PE staff and six full-time coaching staff for 1,400 pupils plus Colne’s six feeder primary schools. Colne’s work with its primary schools has already been held up as the way forward by the Youth Sport Trust.

“Our PE staff are timetabled to work in those primary schools – Alresford, Great Bentley, Elmstead Market, Brightlingsea and Millfields and Broom Grove in Wivenhoe - in two-hour blocks,” he said. “We always teach year six in all those schools, which works out at about 800 children.

“Catch them early, that is my philosophy, and make all sport fun so, as they get older, they never look on it as a chore.”

At Colne, new pupils have a “rotating” programme; a typical programme includes dance, gym, tennis, rounders, football and tag rugby.

All pupils are encouraged to find what suits them best. Compulsory cross-country running in the depths of winter? That is just an unpleasant memory for a previous generation. Some things, though, remain the same.

“There will always be kids who want to get out of playing any sport – that will never change,” he said.

“But capture their minds when they are young, and they are hooked for life. Look at the pupils here – they love it.”

By the time they are 14, pupils have at least three hours of sport and PE a week and the choice is vast.

You name it, Colne has it – football, rugby, cricket, hockey, netball, athletics, rounders, gymnastics, boxing, weight-lifting, trampolining.

Students can take a GCSE in sport, and, if they stay into the sixth form, can receive professional coaching in the school’s special sports academies.

But, as Mr Coleman revealed, it is all a juggling act. Once students reach the sixth form, sport isn’t vying with everything else, but in the last year at primary school and the first three years at secondary school, that is not the case.

“And those years are crucial to getting kids into sport,” he said.

“That is when sport should be at least as important as literacy and numeracy on the timetable – and that is down to the Government.”