Leading researcher campaigns for fair access to sports with Paralympics GB

Professor Smith spoke at a Paralympics GB panel event at the Games in Paris and was joined by the UK’s Government Minister of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, who echoed his call to support the human rights of disabled children to play sport.

The panel event was held to launch the Paralympics GB campaign Equal Play which saw the release of a report and award-winning Channel 4 documentary that Professor Smith contributed to.

Campaigning for equal access

The report, ‘Equal Play: Access to PE and school for all children’, sets out a new policy strategy to make access to school sport and PE more inclusive for disabled children.

It highlights how only one in four of the UK’s 1.5 million schoolchildren with disabilities regularly take part in PE. 

The report’s launch was complemented by a UK television documentary, also called Equal Play, which aired on Channel 4 and features Professor Smith.

Fighting to be heard

The documentary follows two children with disabilities as they are sidelined in school and demand their right to be treated equally in access to sports and PE.

Professor Smith explains in the documentary that many disabled children are being denied a basic human right by being not being able to access PE in school.

He said: “Our research shows that it is not uncommon for disabled children and young adults in schools to be discriminated against and not supported to be physically active or to play sport.

“In fact, they are often told to leave those spaces.

“We need a cultural change; we need leaders within education and particularly from the Government to be able to say that it is a human right for disabled people to have good quality access to physical education.”

A vision for change

The Equal Play report sets out four areas where changes could be made to better support teachers and schools in delivering PE lessons to disabled children.

This includes empowering teachers with the understanding and resources to deliver truly inclusive PE, improving teacher training, redefining how PE is seen within the school curriculum and increasing the number of disabled people entering the teaching profession.

Find out more

• Read the full Equal Play report
• UK residents can watch the Equal Play documentary on Channel 4
• Professor Smith led the first UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines for disabled adults (2018) and disabled children (2022). Read more about Professor Smith’s work.
• Our Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences is ranked fourth in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2025. Visit our Sport and Exercise Sciences webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.