OXFORDSHIRE pupils are to march on Downing Street in a bid to get axed school sports cash reinstated.

They will join thousands of youngsters calling for sports partnership funding to be spared from a Government spending axe.

Pupils from Blessed George Napier School, (BGN), Banbury, will be amongst those who will hand in a petition to the Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday, December 7.

The North Oxfordshire Sports Partnership oversees the district’s 18,500 children in 56 schools and runs teachers’ training, sports activities and competitions for ages five to 19.

Yet its £250,000-a-year running costs runs out at the end of March, a move that would axe 35 jobs.

Some 800 BGN pupils have signed a banner and pupils from Bicester’s St Mary’s and Banbury’s St John’s and Frank Wise schools painted handprints on three other banners.

Sixth former and partnership volunteer Roisin Welby, 18, of Fair Close Bicester, is hoping for up to 2,000 signatures from the partnership area. The national target is one million.

She said: “We aim to show the Government how many people will be affected and how important it is.

“The sports partnership has given so many opportunities to so many different pupils.

“Not necessarily just people who are into sport, but groups who can’t do sport elsewhere.”

It comes as Conservative Banbury MP Tony Baldry rebuffed an open plea by partnership development manager Carl Hamilton to save the funding.

Mr Hamilton wrote: “I feel that its decision to completely cut funding for school sport is deeply damaging and extremely short-sighted.”

The partnership had boosted participation in sport from 25 to 90 per cent in its six-year life in Cherwell district, he said.

But Mr Baldry said it should now be up to schools to choose whether to pay for the service instead of “ring- fenced” funding from Whitehall to the partnership.

He said: “Headteachers can’t keep on saying to ministers that they want for more education budget devolved to them, then complain when that’s exactly what ministers do.”

He said: “If the sports partnership is valued, then it’s an initiative schools should be supporting out of their budget.”

Mr Hamilton welcomed the petition and said: “It’s going to be nothing like the march on student fees, it’s a peaceful march to hand in a petition and allow the young people to make their statement.”

Tony Instone, headteacher at Kings Meadow Primary School, Shakespeare Drive, Bicester, said: “We have seen massive growth in the involvement of children in sport in school, and between schools, in the last few years as a result of this initiative.

“We are very concerned this momentum is maintained.”

Paul Ducker, headteacher at Glory Farm School, Hendon Place, Bicester, warned: “We have no assurance our budget will increase to reflect any money diverted from an initiative like the sports partnership.”

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said the change would stop schools “being tied down by centralised targets and a bureaucratic blueprint set by ministers”.