Intent

At St Mary’s, Physical Education is an integral part of our curriculum and we strive to create a culture which aims to inspire an active generation to enjoy physical activity, encourage one another and for every child to fulfil their potential. We provide a safe and supportive environment for children to flourish in a range of different physical activities, which we know is essential to support their physical, emotional, social and moral development. Our curriculum encourages our pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically-demanding activities. By learning through making mistakes and responding to feedback, our pupils persevere to build their resilience and character on their own and as a team.

Our children learn to be physically confident in their time at St Mary’s so that they can evaluate and recognise their own successes through communicating, collaborating and competing with their peers and against themselves, with the aim to improve their own personal bests. By putting PE, school sport and regular physical activity at the heart of school life, we support the physical health and emotional wellbeing of our children, for now and their next steps in life.

Our wider offer at St Mary’s complements our Physical Education curriculum by promoting active journeys to and from school, a physically active offering during break and lunchtimes, all children having the opportunity to compete in an event of their choice at Sports’ Day, as well as opportunities through clubs and fixtures for pupils in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 across the year. All pupils at St Mary’s demonstrating the school values are given the opportunity to represent the school at inter-school competitions before they progress to their next steps in education, whether they choose to take part in a team fixture, join the cross country team or suggest alternative opportunities they want to get involved in that we can set up – we want all children to leave St Mary’s with positive sporting experiences that provide them with the opportunity to let their light shine.

Implementation

At St Mary's, we offer our pupils 2 hours of Physical Education every week. We use the high-quality expertise of a local sports coaching provider - Inspired Schools - to provide one hour and the other hour is taught by class teachers using the GetSet4PE scheme of learning.

We have designed our PE curriculum to offer our pupils a challenge, build our learners' skills through a range of sports and physical activity, with the chance to apply these skills throughout units of learning. We also offer a PE intervention three times a week, focusing on developing specific skills with a small group of children that have been identified by teachers based on their needs during PE lessons.

What does the research suggest?

In 2020, Public Health England published a report with eight key principles to promote physical activity in schools, to reach a recommended 60 minutes of physical activity per day (30 minutes recommended during school and 30 minutes outside of school). This is what St Mary's does in response to these principles:

Principle 1: Deliver multi-component interventions - This means that we should promote a whole-school approach to physical activity. All classes take part in a daily lap around the track, some completing two or even three laps each day during this time. Staff are encouraged to wear PE kit to school for PE lessons and children also wear PE kit to school, to maximise our time active during lessons.

Principle 2: Ensure a skilled workforce - Half of PE lessons at St Mary's are delivered by Inspired Schools - a specialist coaching company and the other half of lessons are taught by skilled class teachers, who have access to high quality, sport-specific support all-year round.

Principle 3: Engage student voice - PE Pupil Voice questionnaires are completed 2-3 times a year to support our PE, School Sport and Physical Activity offer.

Principle 4: Create active environments - We offer zoned areas on the playground for children to get involved with a number of sporting activities. Our Inspired Schools coach offers sports activities during lunchtime too.

Principle 5: Offer choice and variety - PE lessons are taught in the hall, on the field, on the playground, in the swimming pool or even in the classroom. We ensure our pupils get plenty of variety and opportunities to let their light shine across many different sporting areas. Our Sports' Days reflect this too, providing all children a choice of competition they want to get involved with.

Principle 6: Embed in curriculum, teaching and learning - Teaching active lessons is a priority. Succinct teaching inputs and plenty of time to apply skills and refine them. We make sure children are active.

Principle 7: Promote active travel - We have plenty of scooter and bike racks for children to store them during the school day. We engage in The Bridgwater Way active journey week, as well as the Sustrans Annual Big Walk and Wheel two-week event.

Principle 8: Embed monitoring and evaluation - The leadership team at St Mary's support teachers to teach high quality lessons across the curriculum. We reflect on our offer regularly and track the development of our children every term.

Signposting - On our website under Extra-Curricular Opportunities, we have collated lots of local sports club details so parents/carers can find everything in one place. 

Impact

To measure the impact the PE curriculum is having on our pupils, we use the following methods:

Pupil Voice:

Every year, we ask our pupils to feedback to us about the PE curriculum, along with their views on 'Active Journeys to and from school', 'Break and lunchtimes' and our 'Club offer'. We want to know what they think; then, we consider how we can enhance our offer to best suit our pupils whilst maintaining our high expectations and ambitions for the curriculum. Our PE Lead also meets with a number of pupils to discuss the skills and knowledge they have learned over their most recent unit of learning. This then informs whether we adapt our approach or change our focus to ensure our children are learning what we are teaching them.

Teacher Voice:

In 2022, our Teacher Voice questionnaire and discussion raised a number of important considerations, which led to us changing our approach to teaching PE to further benefit the children. Since then, we have been following GetSet4PE alongside our Inspired Schools curriculum to promote the learning of skills and knowledge through a sporting lens, with the hope that it leads to our pupils getting involved with local clubs for now and in the future.

External reflection aids:

To provide our children with a breadth of opportunities and a depth of understanding, we reflect every year on our offer of Physical Education, School Sport and Physical Activity (PESSPA). Using the Schools Games Mark, we consider wider areas that would benefit our children, such as their understanding of 'physical literacy' and the numbers of pupils regularly participating in after school clubs or local clubs. We have been awarded Gold for our provision for the 2023-2024 academic year, which has been confirmed by our local School Games Organiser.

In Summer 2024, we will also be enrolling in a further self-review and evaluation process - the AfPE Quality Mark - which will require an external school improvement professional to jointly review our current provision. If the Validation Team believe our practice is outstanding and we show innovation in our provision, AfPE will signpost the DfE to St Mary's as a model of best practice. The outcome of this evaluation will provide enough information to further triangulate our areas to improve.

End-of-Unit assessments:

Each pupil for every unit will be assessed against the unit criteria.

Parent/Carer Voice:

In 2023, as our Sports' Day is a big part of our PE offer, we have been asking the parents/carers what they think of Sports' Day and how we can aim for all children to enjoy it. From 2024, we will be including a Parent/Carer Voice to further triangulate our impact across the PE curriculum. We know that our pupils love to share their day with their family members and therefore parents/carers have a good understanding of their children's interests. We want suggestions from everyone.