PhD, Associate Professor M.A. Surkova¹
PhD A.A. Ilyin¹
PhD, Associate Professor M.V. Rybkina¹
PhD, Associate Professor Е.V. Pirogova^1
1Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after V.I. Ulyanov, Ulyanovsk

Keywords: physical education and sports, management, legal counseling service, financing, government bodies, sport institutions.

Background. Today the Russian government gives high priority to physical culture and sports development policies and initiatives due to the reportedly sagging public health standards in the country on the whole and in the Ulyanovsk Region in particular. This is the reason why the policies and practices to step up the physical activity of different population groups, improve the physical and intellectual qualities of the national human resource and cultivate healthy lifestyles with a focus on the young generation are ranked among the most important government responsibilities. The public health degrading trend is viewed as one of the most critical problems today as demonstrated by the falling birthrates, high mortality rates and sagging public physical development, fitness and health rates. Special attention shall be given to children, adolescents and young people to promote healthy lifestyles in these population groups, with the relevant initiatives to ensure the modern physical education and sport services being easily accessible, affordable and appealing for everybody.

It should be mentioned that success and progress of the above health and sport services and initiatives in Russia directly depends on the legal and regulatory framework for the physical culture and sport sector operations. The growing priority given to the physical culture and sports in our society is formalized by the key government policies as provided, among other acts, by the Federal Law “On Physical Culture and Sports in the Russian Federation”; National Physical Culture and Sports Development Strategy for the Period up to 2020;  and the Federal Target Program Concept of the National Physical Culture and Sports Development Strategy for the Period of 2016 to 2020 [2]. The Concept gives a central role to physical culture and sports in the healthy lifestyle promotion and cultivation initiatives and makes provisions for the efficient modern physical education system being implemented in the national education system with a special priority to the children and adolescent training programs. To facilitate the above goals being attained, the relevant government agencies and self-management bodies of every level shall take the necessary institutional, management, legal, regulatory and economic initiatives.

The Ulyanovsk regional government considers the local physical culture and sports development initiatives an integral part of its socio-economic policies implemented by the relevant legislative and executive bodies in the region. Special efforts are being taken by the regional government to: employ on the most efficient basis every opportunity and resource of the local physical culture and sports sector to promote healthy lifestyles in the local communities and encourage a broader engagement of the Ulyanovsk regional population in systemic physical trainings and sports; increase the shares of the local school and university students covered by the regional physical education and sport services; step up the service capacities of the local sport facilities and infrastructure; increase the numbers of the highly-skilled athletes and qualifiers to the national Russian teams in the region etc. [3].

Objective of the study was to help improve the regional physical education and sports sector management and the legal and regulatory framework for the sector operations.

Methods and structure of the study. Having analyzed the valid legal and regulatory provisions for the regional physical education and sports sector management, we found that they are generally designed on the idea that physical culture forms an integral part of the general national culture and may be defined as the specific field of social activity geared to develop the relevant spiritual and material values that are necessary for the physical development, health improvement and motor activity promotion purposes. The key responsibility of the physical education and sports sector management is to put in place facilitating provisions to ensure growing coverage of different population groups by the physical training and sport services to help people improve their health standards, mitigate the negative effects behind the unfavorable demographic trends and scale down the demand for medical services. One more important goal of the relevant regional policies is to contribute to the sport reserve training process and accomplishments of the national Russian teams in many events and particularly in the Olympic sports. The efforts to attain the above goals on an integrated basis, however, are still constrained by a few problems, including the regional physical education and sports sector management inefficiency and bottlenecks.

The key missions and goals of the Ministry of Physical Culture and Sports Ulyanovsk Regional Office were set pursuant to the Presidential Decree of May 07, 2012 and regulations of the Board for the President of Russia. Legal and regulatory framework for the national physical culture and sports sector is provided by the Law “On the Physical Culture and Sports in the Ulyanovsk Region”; State Program of Physical Culture and Sports Development in the Ulyanovsk Region in the Period of 2014-2020 (updated version of 07.09.2017); Socio-economic Development Strategy of the Ulyanovsk Region for the Period up to 2030; and relevant decisions of Ulyanovsk Regional Government and Governor.

Study results and discussion. Given in Table 1 hereunder are the key progress indicators of the Ulyanovsk Regional physical education and sports sector.

Table 1. Key progress indicators of the Ulyanovsk Regional physical education and sports sector

As demonstrated in Table 1, the total investments to the Ulyanovsk regional physical education and sports sector from the Federal, Regional and local government budgets, private investors and other off-budgetary sources were estimated at RUB2330.9 million in 2016 that is RUB208.2 million more than in 2015. However, further allocations to the national physical education and sports sector are expected from the Federal budget to mitigate or reverse the existing negative socio-economic trends [1].

Share of the systemically sporting population was reported at 34.1% of the total population of the Ulyanovsk Region as of 2016, with the progress to 2015 making up 1.6%. As of 2016, the Ulyanovsk regional government supports 52 Children’s and Youth Sport Schools (CYSS), special Children’s and Youth Olympic Reserve Sport Schools (CYORSS) and Olympic Reserve Sport Schools (ORSS) operating on a non-commercial basis, with the total student population estimated at 25,009.

Furthermore, the Ulyanovsk Regional Government mandated the Health and Sports Day in the Region by its Resolution #190-pr of 06.04.2016.  Programs of the Health and Sports Day have included more than 300 physical education and sport events including master classes with contributions from the popular athletes, coaches and sport activists of the Ulyanovsk Region, sport festivals for the local teams, mass calisthenics and other mass sport events. 

As required by the Physical Culture and Sports Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2020, the share of the regional population engaged in physical education and sports on a systemic basis shall come to 40% by 2020. This is the reason why the regional government makes a special emphasis on the initiatives to cultivate due needs and motivations for physical training, sports and healthy lifestyles in the local communities; and takes efforts to establish facilitating conditions for a broader engagement of every age group to the habitual sporting and competitive process. It may be stated that presently the Ulyanovsk Region shows progress in the healthy lifestyle cultivation domain, with the contributions of the local communities to the physical training and sporting projects and events reported to have grown for the last few years.

The total service capacity of the sport facilities in the Ulyanovsk Region is presently estimated at 23.1 % giving it the 12th^th position in the Volga region Federal Area (PFA) – versus the PFA and RF averages reported at 28.2% and 25.1%, respectively. Events under the Ulyanovsk Regional Programs have been reported to encourage inflow of the local residents to the habitual physical trainings and sports. The growth of the local sporting population needs to be supported by increased financial allocations to the local physical culture and sports sector from the governmental budgets of every level and private investors, plus own contributions of the sporting residents.

Despite the general progress of the regional physical culture and sports sector, it still faces a few problems that need to be timely and effectively addressed by the relevant management decisions of the regional government agencies, including: the need for a fully-fledged municipal-level physical culture and sports management system (since presently the regional executive management authorities are still rather unspecific and indiscriminate in the physical culture, sports and youth policy sector); the still high proportion of the commercial sporting and leisure-time services (with the relevant negative social costs, including the negative effects on the young people’s health standards); further cuts in the numbers of the regional sport institutions (including the non-commercial clubs and amateur sport organizations); still poor legal and regulatory framework for the amateur mass sports in the region; shortage of the physical training and sport assets in the region, particularly in its rural areas; still short financing of the relevant institutions directly responsible for the Federal sport training standards being implemented in the region; still short financing of the local sport events and the initiatives to contract prominent athletes to the relevant regional and municipal sport initiatives; still high labour turnover and shortage of young highly-qualified specialists and coaches for the relevant physical training and sport projects and establishments, particularly in the rural areas, with the situation being further aggravated by the valid Article 351.1 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation that sets limitations for the contractual service in the children’s and youth sports sector [4].

A special emphasis in the youth policies of the regional government agencies shall be made on the efforts to promote the ongoing physical culture and sports programs and thereby encourage further engagement of the local children and young people to the systemic physical training and sport practices and cultivate healthy lifestyles in the local communities, with such practices being beneficial in many aspects, including mitigation of the young people’s criminalization trends. Such initiatives in cooperation with the local sport organizations shall be designed to give a due priority to the mass sport events and sport days, with special efforts to facilitate operations of the network of sport and health clubs serving the local children and youth, and other sport organizations.

Conclusion. The regional government policies in the local physical culture and sports sector development domain are recommended to be further advanced by the initiatives to: design the top-priority local physical culture and sports sector development projects with due consideration for the local specifics and needs (including locations of sport assets, actual needs of the local physical training and sporting groups etc.); support the local physical culture and sports advancement initiatives by due provisions in the Ulyanovsk regional budget; develop and implement an efficient commercial service control system to facilitate a broader public access to the sport facilities and sport competitions; identify fields and provide mechanisms for efficient cooperation with the non-governmental sport associations; monitor and analyze the physical culture development needs of the local municipalities; make adjustments to the regional physical culture and sports development programs and ensure due contribution to them based on the valid program implementation arrangements; further advance the local physical culture and sports development concept to secure high quality physical training and sporting services for different population groups at jobs, education establishments and in leisure time; welcome and host top-ranking sport events in the region, including the world championships, sport festivals etc. The top-ranking Russian and international competitive events and broader visits of the local athletes for participation in the inter-regional, Russian and international sport events are viewed among the key drivers for further advancement of different sports in the Region and improvements in physical fitness, sport mastery and life quality of the local communities in the Ulyanovsk Region.

References

1. Alekseeva S.V. Sportivnoe pravo Rossii. Pravovye osnovy fizicheskoy kultury i sporta [Sports law of Russia. Legal basis of physical culture and sports]. 2^nd-3^rd ed. Moscow, 2012, 671 p.
2. Rasporyazhenie Pravitelstva Rossiyskoy Federatsii ‘Ob utverzhdenii ‘Strategii razvitiya fizicheskoy kultury i sporta v Rossiyskoy Federatsii na period do 2020 goda’’ [Order of the Government of the Russian Federation ‘On the Approval of the Strategy for Development of Physical Culture and Sport in the Russian Federation for the Period until 2020’]. Available at: http://www.minsport.gov.ru/.
3. Nazarenko L.D., Timoshina I.N., Parfenova L.A. Mezhpredmetny podkhod v fizicheskom vospitanii shkolnikov, imeyuschikh otkloneniya v sostoyanii zdorovya [Intersubject approach in physical education of schoolchildren with health deviations]. Fizicheskaya kultura: vospitanie, obrazovanie, trenirovka, 2013, no. 1, pp. 53-59.
4. Khokhlov V.I. Sroki naznacheniya i ischisleniya nakazaniya v vide lisheniya prava zanimat opredelennye dolzhnosti ili zanimatsya opredelennoy deyatelnostyu [Terms of sentencing and calculation of periods for punishment in the form of deprivation of the right to occupy certain positions or engage in certain activities]. Sb. st. po materialam XIVI mezhdunar. nauch.-prakt. konf. ‘Nauchnaya diskussiya: voprosy yurisprudentsii’ [Proc. XIVI intern. res.-practical conf. ‘Scientific discussion: matters of jurisprudence’, no. 2 (41)]. Moscow: Internauka publ., 2016, 138 p.

Corresponding author: surcmar@mail.ru

Abstract

The study analyzes the regional physical education and sports management system, health benefits of the system for the local communities and its economic benefits as verified by the regional and national socio-economic development statistics. Subject to analyses under the study was the existing legal and regulatory framework for the system; progress of the regional physical education and sports development program with its key progress trends as verified by the regional statistical reports; the forecast progress data; and the financial provisions for the regional physical education and sports. The study data and analyses helped highlight and analyze the key problems and challenges for the sector and offer recommendations on how the regional physical education and sports system management policies could be improved to lure the local communities into the physical education and sports services and thereby contribute to the human resource development process in the Ulyanovsk Region.