Intent

At St Edward’s Catholic Primary School we believe that PE is essential to the academic, social, emotional, spiritual and physical development of all children. An effective PE curriculum will improve children’s confidence and raise their self-esteem, as well as enabling them to develop positive attitudes about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It will encourage good sportsmanship and team work skills and therefore better equip them to be able to participate fluently within their social and work communities - as well as within sport – make and maintain effective healthy relationships, become aware of and monitor their own health and be able to assess risks and be comfortable when making ‘safe’ risk choices.

The main aims of PE are:

• To promote physical activity, physical development and healthy lifestyles through a range of well planned activities which meet the needs of all children.
• To develop social co-operation, positive attitudes and to compete with a sense of fair play and good sportsmanship.
• To promote lifelong learning, active participation and a thirst for competition.
• To promote and develop safe practice in physical activities through high quality opportunities and outcomes.
• To provide equal opportunities for all children regardless of race, gender, background or ability.
• To provide opportunities for all children to achieve their full potential and assist each individual to be the best they can be whilst raising achievement and supporting excellence.

Implementation

At St Edward’s we use RealPE as a base for our planning - this unique, child-centred approach challenges and supports every child. Staff use the Learning Nutrition document to focus on ambition, personalised outcomes, praise, celebration, review of progress, coaching and support of others as well as control and keeping ourselves safe.

All learning outcomes are taken from the National Curriculum schemes of work in order to ensure there is a progression of skills throughout EYFS, KS1 and KS2. We use RealPE and RealGym to guide our planning of the majority of the PE curriculum but augment this with dance, swimming, variations of bikeability (according to age and stage of development), speed stacking and cricket.

Swimming and water safety is taught to all of children in KS2 by qualified swimming coaches at a local pool.

All classes have the opportunity to participate in an extra-curricular sporting activities each year.  The school is increasing its participation in inter-school competitions as well as intra-school tournaments. It is the subject leader’s responsibility to book these events and to organize participants and staff to support.

All children and staff should change into suitable clothing for PE which allows freedom of movement.

Children with long hair should have it tied back during PE and all jewellery must be removed by the child.  If a child cannot remove their earrings as they have been pierced within 6 weeks, the parent must provide a plaster or tape to surround the earring and must be applied by the child themselves.

A risk assessment will be carried out prior to the lesson when facilities, apparatus and equipment is checked by the teacher or coach. When handling and setting up apparatus, children must be supervised by an adult in order to ensure this is carried out safely. At St. Edward's we conduct annual inspections of all our PE equipment.  Records of their inspections can be found within the main school office.

Parents are invited to annual sporting events which involve their children, including our sports day. Throughout the year children are selected to represent the school in local, sometimes national, sporting festivals and KCSP organized events and where possible, parents are invited to attend to show their support.

There are a wide range of clubs offered by the school each week, although this changes according to the time of year and ongoing feedback from the children. Many of these are run for free by external coaches or for a minimal fee.  We are actively involved with a number of local clubs and organisations, including karate, Irish dancing, multisports, football and are always looking for different groups to add to the range of activities offered to our children and the wider community.