PE
Here at Mead Vale Community Primary school, our school delivers a skills-led curriculum that is inclusive for all of our pupils. We do this by linking the aims of RealPE (which focuses on developing and nurturing the whole-child, focussing on a 6-cog approach: personal, physical, social, cognitive, creative and health and fitness) with the skills of the national curriculum, ensuring that children have a holistic approach to their learning. We strive for an environment where children focus on being the best they can be, and use personal best as a driving factor to ensure every child is challenged and stretched, an ethos that then feeds into the wider school community. Children are encouraged to celebrate working towards their personal bests, but are also provided an environment where it is ok to fail and make mistakes as long as the intention is there to try your best, with participation equally as important. We aim for our children to be inspired by their teachers, and the teachers to be inspired and confident to deliver the subject the best way they can. This is why we allow choice to deliver the necessary skills with each year group delivering different sports and activities that suit them. The nature of our transferable skills curriculum allows this to happen. Our philosophy of be the best you can be fits into every lesson in the school so children see PE as an extension to a classroom based lesson.
• The Six Cogs of Real PE
Our P.E. curriculum focusses on developing and celebrating the whole child and is not wholly focussed on developing sporting skill.
Personal – Developing our children’s ability to strive for personal excellence in all that they do. Try to be the best versions of themselves, constantly trying to develop and improve.
Social – Developing the ability to work effectively with others. Cooperating with, leading and motivating others to improve their performances.
Physical – Developing the ability to comfortably and confidently perform a variety of skills across a range of sporting situations.
Cognitive – Developing thinking skills. Learning to analyse both our own and others’ performances. Learning how to outwit opponents and explaining why ideas and tactics work or don’t work.
Creative – Developing our ability to be expressive through physical activity. How can we adapt and adjust our tactics? How can we effectively link movements to perform sequences?
Health and Fitness – Developing an understanding of the benefits of health and exercise and encouraging our children to develop positive, life-long habits.
• Is your physical education curriculum well planned or a series of piecemeal events?
Our curriculum has been carefully planned out by the P.E. lead, who worked in collaboration with the ELAN sports champion to plan what we believe to be an exciting, engaging and effective P.E. curriculum. It is a progressive curriculum that aims to stay up to date with current trends, working closing with other MAT schools to ensure we continually move forwards. We regularly seek advice from the ELAN Sports Champion to progress and develop further. Our PE curriculum is both fun and engaging for staff and children, meaning maximum participation in a subject we value dearly at the heart of our schools.
• Does your curriculum have real breadth?
Our curriculum is ambitious to meet the needs of all pupils. The breadth of opportunity in our curriculum is endless, with children accessing a number of sports over their time with us. Using money from our Sport Premium, we are able to bring in experts in a number of sports to provide monthly masterclasses to every child, giving children experiences that they may not get elsewhere. As well as this, we also provide enrichment trips, allowing children to experience other sports other than just the traditional sports. We do not limit our children to certain sports, instead we draw on the confidence of our teachers to deliver the skills through chosen sports. This is an ever-changing cycle and we value children gaining the competence to excel in this broad range of activities.
• Is it sequenced and scaffolded?
We use RealPE alongside the national curriculum to ensure the sequencing and progression of our curriculum is purposeful and relevant from year to year. We aim to link the assessment into our skills lead curriculum, ensuring children are aware of the expectations of them, but also allowing children to be stretched and challenged when necessary, but also supported to make the next challenge. Across our schools, we have collaborated to form an ambitious assessment target for each child in every topic we deliver.
• Is it inclusive?
We value every child in our school, regardless of age, ability, gender or disability. Every child deserves the right to be physically educated so using the differentiation of RealPE, we are able to make this happen. Having differentiation of activities, as well as targets allows the children to constantly be encouraged to not only fully take part, but aim to be the best they can be, further encouraging our philosophy to help create a culture within our provision. We also seek every opportunity to provide our staff with further CPD to upskill them and ensure that teaching is fully inclusive.
• Do you help pupils to ‘learn’ the curriculum?
Children come to PE expecting to be educated through skills, challenges, activities and games. They learn through being active for sustained periods of time in order to build resilience to physical learning. We regularly signpost children to competitive sport outside of school, as well as ensuring opportunities to play against other schools in both competitive and non-competitive environments. We do this through ELAN and our affiliation with the NSSPEA. When teaching through games, we allow children the opportunity to make mistakes in order to build the character to work on weaknesses and improve their skill set. Values of fairness and respect are also learnt. Our children will be equipped with the life skills and knowledge they need through our ambitious curriculum.
• Are your pupils ‘world’ ready?
Pupils will be knowledgeable in physical education, and physically confident to support their own futures both in physical education and in health and fitness. RealPE also gives us the chance to develop the whole child through the holistic approach. The social, cognitive, creative, and personal skills as well as the physical skills allow us to be confident that children leave us more than ready for the next steps in their life long journey.
• Is assessment used effectively and not burdensome?
We have simplified the assessment of PE to allow teachers to be confident in knowing where their children are. We use exception reports that are consistent for teachers from other subjects. This allows us measure where the children are with an expected target for each key skill delivered. This is vitally important when children move up a year group, and also allows us to ensure a progressive curriculum is evident across all year groups.
• Are SLT/governors aware of, and on board with, the physical education curriculum?
The PE Lead reports termly to SLT and governors on the sport premium. In this report, targets are shared with the progress being made by year groups and also the numbers representing the school in teams and events. New initiatives are discussed with the upcoming spend of the premium shared for discussion. The PE curriculum in discussed, and shows the benefits of it being delivered to all children. An SLT representative was present in the CWP with other MAT schools, further demonstrating our commitment to provide the best possible provision possible to our children.
• Does your school invest in physical education CPD?
Teachers are invested in, as well as the PE Lead. We have worked with the teaching school to put together a robust curriculum that will enable staff to not only be confident to teach the subject, but thrive whilst doing so. We ask our staff who wants upskilling, and through ELAN we are able to meet their needs. ELAN have measured the % of staff who have found cpd beneficial and we have managed to get teachers confident to deliver PE through this, and are now undertaking the next steps to a meaningful and impactful curriculum, whilst also ensuring our children make progress in the subject as teachers who need supporting still get the support they need. Through our membership with the NSSPEA, we also have 10 hours of CPD available to staff for any bespoke CPD that they require.
Children will leave us knowing the differences between ‘PE’, ‘School Sport’ and ‘Physical Activity’ and all children will be encouraged to take some form of sports leadership and represent a school team, demonstrating the confidence to do so. All children are given opportunity to be active for the recommended 30 minutes a day and we deliver this through ‘The Daily Mile’ as well as active break and lunch times. Yoga sessions, brain breaks, and jump start Jonny are also used as interventions to be physically active in the classroom, ensuring that as a school, we are as active as possible.
Links with local sports clubs
We are always looking to develop links with local sports clubs. We welcome any new relationships and want to form affiliations with clubs from a whole range of sports. If you are part of a local sports team and would like to form a relationship with our school, please contact Mr. Watkins, the school P.E. lead.
We currently have links with the following clubs:
Weston Tennis Club
https://clubspark.lta.org.uk/WestonTennisClub
Weston Cricket Club
https://www.westoncricketclub.co.uk/
North Somerset Athletics Club