29 August 2008
Targets get a bad press. When the subject comes up on the Today programme, John Humphrys can barely suppress a snarl. Hardly a day goes by without some professional body or senior public official (especially doctors, police officers and teachers) complaining about the 'target culture'. The Opposition parties make hay out of popular and professional mistrust of targets.
It is passing strange then, that hardly any mention has been made of the 'target culture' that preceded Team GB's unprecedented avalanche of medals in Beijing.
But before looking at the run-up to the Olympics and the 'targetry' that might have played a vital part, just how surprising was our fourth place, 19 golds and 47 medals tally? The answer is: not very. On August 5, an item appeared on the BBC website saying that a former member of the Italian Olympic Committee, Luciano Barra, was projecting 48 medals in total, 18 golds and fourth place for Team GB - a remarkably accurate projection, as it turned out. In fact, Barra criticised Sport UK for deliberately downplaying our chances - their target was 10-12 golds, 35-41 medals and eighth in the medals table.
The history of target setting for the Olympics is interesting and, as might be expected, controversial.
Back in January 2005, the National Audit Office submitted a report to Parliament assessing the UK's progress following the 2004 Athens Games. It specifically looked at the role of UK Sport, the quango that uses National Lottery money to support elite athletes through its 'World Class Performance Programme', which provided £84m of support to selected sports in the run-up to Athens. The five main sports targeted were athletics, cycling, rowing, sailing and swimming - the last four of which counted for almost the entire medal haul from Beijing.
The NAO concluded that the programme and UK Sport had arrested the historic decline in UK performance and started an upwards movement. While the NAO had criticisms of the way that the quango reported its performance and of some operational problems with the programme, overall it was positive.
The NAO report was followed up with a hard-hitting report from the Public Accounts Committee, published in July 2006. This put more pressure on UK Sport and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to have clear targets and reporting. The report noted some confusion between targets apparently agreed between the department and UK Sport and what the quango announced publicly.
UK Sport adopted a fairly ruthless 'money follows success' strategy - boosting funds to areas that were expected to produce more medals at world and Olympic level and cutting it for sports that were failing to meet targets.
This strategy, and indeed the whole idea of targeting elite sports, has not been without its critics. Indeed, the PAC report noted: 'Sport is not just about medals or a celebrity culture, but about the benefits of taking part. It will be important, therefore, to maintain a balance between promoting world-class and mass-participation activities.'
Just before Beijing, those actually running Team GB - the British Olympics Committee - made sceptical noises. Its chief executive, Simon Clegg, told the BBC that the BOC didn't have a medal or ranking target for Beijing, although it was aiming for fourth in London 2012. He explained that the BOC was taking many inexperienced younger athletes to Beijing in preparation for 2012 the implication being that we didn't expect to do as well this time around, so there was no point setting unrealistic targets.
Immediately after Beijing, the chief executive of the Central Council for Physical Recreation, Tim Lamb, complained that community sports were being starved of cash to fund elite sports. While UK Sport had enjoyed a 230% increase in funding since 2000, Sport England and its counterparts had received only 7%.
There is clearly a debate to be had about the balance of funding and on whether, as Lamb maintains, failing to fund community sports is a 'weak link' in the chain towards international excellence. Or, indeed, if community sports ought to be given greater priority for other policy reasons, too - such as health or crime reduction.
What cannot be doubted, though, is that it seems a combination of focusing of resources, structures and performance targets have led to Olympic success. But you will wait a very long time to hear the Opposition parties saying what a success targets have been in Olympic sports.
I am not saying centrally imposed targets are always, or even mostly, a good idea - but credit where it's due. It would be nice if our politicians and commentariat were honest and pragmatic enough to acknowledge that in this case at least, targets might just have had something to do with all that success.
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management at the Herbert Simon Institute, Manchester Business School
PFaug2008
