Physical Education (PE)
'Sport is a language that everyone speaks and it can be used to change lives. It's more than keeping fit, it's about respect, team building, trust and confidence.' -David Beckham
Intent
At St Mark’s Primary School, we aim to provide an outstanding PE curriculum that pupils from Reception to Year 6 can not only enjoy but experience a range of activities that help them to develop their health, fitness and wellbeing. Those teaching this area of the curriculum understand the importance of each of these areas and are invested in the concept that a positive wellbeing is the foundation for success. Many of our children live in a disadvantaged area and are impacted by deprivation themselves. Participating in regular physical activity and team sports has been well documented to help mitigate some adversities that can be associated with deprivation: it can have a profound impact on not only developing the children physically but also socially, emotionally and mentally, whilst also building resilience. This is why, as a school, St Mark’s Primary School considers physical education as one of the most important areas of the curriculum and places a huge emphasis on the quality in which we deliver.
St Mark’s Primary School aspires to offer a high-quality physical education curriculum that inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in sport and other physically demanding activities. Here, it is taught only by teachers and coaches who are qualified to understand both the emotional and physical needs of the children at St Mark’s Primary School. Our intent is to provide opportunities for pupils to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness. To best implement this, we take into consideration the children’s interests and also identify sports that they may have little to no exposure or opportunity in, but feel they may enjoy. Our curriculum map reflects this, but also ensures that these skills will be implemented in a developmentally appropriate order and teaches all of the fundamental movement skills, creating lessons which are both challenging and inclusive. The two PE lessons a week each have a different fundamental movement skill focus, which will be taught in different topics and will change every half-term.
We aim to provide many opportunities to compete in sport and other activities throughout the year as we believe it can help build character and embed values such as fairness and respect. However, as a school we realise it is important to make sure it’s the child’s choice to participate in competitions, as for some children competing may impact a child’s perception of PE negatively and their willingness to participate. For these children, we create different opportunities such as smaller group interventions, competitions and specific clubs to help nurture and develop their confidence to better foster their enjoyment.
We also further support children who have limited chances to sport activities outside of school through finding targeted interventions and opportunities such as free holiday and after school clubs.
Implementation
Children are taught by a combination of teachers and sports coaches, from Reception to Year 6, all of whom are trained and have a good understanding of mental health, special educational needs and the implementation of developmentally appropriate PE. Children have equal opportunities to take part in a range of sports and physical activities within a supportive environment where effort as well as success is recognised.
Government Guidelines
We implement the guidelines set by the national curriculum to ensure we offer a range of fundamental skills that allow each child to feel challenged and offer opportunities to progress further.
Key stage 1
Key stage 2
Swimming
Every child in Key Stage 2 attends at least 6 hours of swimming lessons, usually in Year 5 and Year 6.
Our Curriculum
At St Mark’s Primary School, the PE curriculum is structured to provide a range of sports experiences during which every child participates to develop their skills and learning through competitive, team and individual sports. The curriculum map is progressive with skills being worked upon and developed throughout and across the years. Skills are carefully plotted to ensure maximum success across the year. Each academic year, the children are taught 12 topics and cover all of the fundamental movement skills which gradually become more challenging as they move through the year and the school.
Click here to view progression of skills and knowledge from Early Years to Year 6
Click here to view how the skills progress
Click here to view the long-term progression map
To view the topics covered throughout the school year and for more information about the implementation of the curriculum map:
Click here for whole school curriculum map
Lessons
To ensure the consistency of physical education we use a scheme of work, GetSet4Pe, which supports the teachers in scaffolding the skills whilst also providing a wealth of other support for the successful teaching of PE.
Staying active throughout the day
Children are encouraged to participate in exercise throughout the day during PE lessons, clubs, outdoor learning, lunch provision and special events. Recently, some of our Year 5 and 6 pupils have successfully trained to be active leaders, whereby they offer a range of sporting activities for children to participate in at lunchtime.
As a school, we aim to ensure that the children participate in active lessons outside of their regular PE lessons. This involves incorporating moments within lessons whereby the children can be moving. Every class also uses regular movement breaks, the active mile and morning wake up activities to prepare the children for learning.
Impact
To identify areas of improvement in the delivery of PE, observations of staff teaching are carried out by PE Leads, the SLT and external assessors. Class teachers regularly self-assess and identify any areas they feel that PE Leads could offer support with.
Each child is assessed during and after every topic and we use this to help us identify pupils displaying any areas of particular talent and also those who find aspects more challenging. These teacher assessments are uploaded to each child’s profile page so that these can be added to during their journey at St Mark’s Primary School. A video of the first lesson and last lesson of each topic is taken so that we can see the progression and identify further areas for development both in teaching and the children’s learning.
Click here for an example of an assessment criteria for a topic
Pupil surveys are also carried out at key points across the course of the year. Findings from these are used to inform class and whole school planning moving forward.