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Thatcher's 1981 Regulation 909 gave education authorities the right to sell school land that they considered surplus to their requirements.
Over the next decade an estimated 5,000 playing fields were sold, many converted to housing developments, supermarkets or car parks.
When a prolonged industrial dispute between government and teaching unions, centred on pay and conditions, led to thousands of teachers refusing to continue providing unpaid after-school sports lessons, pupils' hours of sports fell still further.
Thatcher's supporters would blame instead a decline in competitive sports. Other, wider forces were also at work - the rise of computer gaming, a society-wide increase in sedentary lifestyles.
Whatever the cause, a survey by the Secondary Heads Association showed that the proportion of pupils under 14 spending less than two hours a week in physical education rose from 38% to 71% between 1987 and 1990.
By the end of the Conservative hegemony in 1997, that figure had crept above 75%.
Source: BBC
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t-v
But surely they reinvested those proceeds into alternative facilities?