Physical Education

Intent

At Leighton Academy, we hold Physical Education (PE), physical activity, healthy choices and participation at the centre of our daily life and development. To foster a love of being active, physically confident, the positive experiences, skill development (not only physical but social, communication, respect for self and others and cooperative skills) which will support our pupils on their journey and encourage others to join them now and in the future.

We aim to deliver high quality teaching and learning opportunities enabling our pupils to acquire, develop and refine their skills and techniques. We understand the importance of PE, School Sport and Physical Activity on people’s health, fitness and well being,

Additionally, to further their understanding and knowledge of PE concepts, develop increasing competence participating with enjoyment in a range of sport and physical activities.

Our PE curriculum is inclusive, engaging and challenges all, fostering resilience, participation and the development of transferable, fundamental movement skills from Early Years.

These include:

• Locomotor skills, for example running and jumping
• Stability skills, including twisting and balancing
• Manipulation skills such as throwing and catching

It builds on these revisiting and refining them, applying them to many sports and contexts across the curriculum and real life. We believe the skills we learn in PE can support our healthy choices, character development including fairness, competitiveness and respect for ourselves and others, social participation in school and wider community, now and in the future.

We follow the national curriculum and enhance our provision with many experiences and opportunities:  participation, perseverance, enjoyment and application of skills and knowledge for all our pupils. The use of competitive experiences both within school, whether inter year group competitions, representing the school through a host of opportunities and competitions including Inspire, Aspire and Celebrate competitions. We develop our skills as motivators and coaches both of ourselves and each other to perform our best and celebrating our effort and achievements together.

Our swimming curriculum is progressive from Year Two and through Key Stage 2. We aspire to foster a love of swimming and for all pupils to be able to swim 25 metres and have essential water safety skills and knowledge by the end of Key Stage Two.

Implementation

Our Physical Education curriculum is progressive and builds the strong fundamental movement skills developed through Early Years, developed further in Key Stage One and continually revisited with a focus on refinement and application in Key Stage two.

Our PE instructor teaches approximately fifty percent of lessons. This enables dialogue regarding skill development and pupil performance, specific expertise, opportunities for CPD to support staff and pupil skill development. The continued teaching as the pupils’ progress through school enables greater knowledge of pupils’ current attainment, knowledge of their next steps and the ability to support staff and pupils to achieve their goals in PE.

All our pupils receive PE lessons delivered and supported by our PE instructor and PE team. This starts with our Two Year olds’  ‘Active Kids’ sessions, dedicated PE lessons for our Pre school /Nursery pupils alongside the exploration and of physical development skills in our Nursery setting and grounds. Our Reception pupils receive weekly dedicated PE sessions alongside their Physical development provision.

In Key Stage One and Two we follow the national curriculum and utilise the PE hub schemes of work. This provides the staff and pupils with carefully sequenced progressive units of lessons focusing on different skills, sports and healthy living knowledge and activities.In Key stage One all pupils receive two

dedicated PE lessons, alongside the application of skills across the curriculum and opportunities to participate in numerous extra-curricular clubs. The skills they develop are harnessed and applied to other curriculum areas for example Personal Development and History Commando Jo, Samuel Pepys active cooperative activities. Each year all pupils participate in competitive games situations in a variety of sports. The pupils start their swimming lessons in Year 2 and these continue through Key Stage Two.  

In Key Stage Two pupils continue to engage in two PE lessons each week and the focus on further development of existing fundamental skills, their refinement and application to a range of sports and active situations. Each year all pupils participate in competitive games situations in a variety of sports. We link PE across the curriculum fostering healthy lifestyles and developing awareness of the importance of physical activity and skills of cooperation and team work. An example of this is our Year Four residential to Edgmond Hall where we complete den building and orienteering skills combining our Humanities, PD and Maths skills with our PE skills, knowledge and social cooperative skills.

Impact

Our PE curriculum is progressive and inclusive, from entry into school we develop pupils’ fundamental PE knowledge, skills, techniques, understanding and apply these in a range of games, sports and physical activities. Pupils share their PE lessons and activities are enjoyable, challenging and they are encouraged and coached to improve their performance and always motivated to do their best.
Our pupils are physically active and know how to make healthy choices. They understand how this will have a positive impact on their learning.

We have achieved the School sports Platinum award for a number of years and this has been achieved again this year. This reinforces the efforts, engagement and commitment of our pupils and staff, the breadth of our provision and opportunities we provide alongside our direct PE lessons. This includes:

Pupils completing 60 minutes of physical activity each day,
Pupils access to a wide range of extra-curricular activities
Opportunities to represent the school in Inspire, Aspire and Celebrate competitions
Pupils involvement in the development of our PE and School curriculum and development.

We utilise the expertise of our PE instructor and other Professional including GB gymnastic coaches and GB Athletics coaches to provide CPD for staff, teach our pupils and provide exemplar role models and aspiration for everyone.

We ensure our curriculum is inclusive and offers challenge for all abilities through lessons and additional clubs and events participation.

We engage parents in our PE offer including Marathon Kids promoting exercise and social participation alongside personal target setting.

We enable all pupils to take active part in competitive games and tournaments including sports days, Games for All, Quad Kids, Boccia, Sportshall and Town sports and many other sports. We celebrate the representation from all of our demographics including SEND and Pupil Premium pupils.

Through our regular monitoring and pupil voice sessions, plus feedback provided by our Sports Leaders (gained from their peers) we evolve our curriculum to develop exposure and application of our PE skills to new sports. This has included La Crosse introduced and expanded in Key Stage Two.

The development of the Key Stage Two playground into sport and activity focused areas including football, handball, tennis, basketball, multi skills and agility trail areas and specific coaching sessions utilising the school hall.

We utilise a combination of methods to assess progress and adapt our provision. This includes key skills assessments completed by all teaching staff and the PE instructor, learning walks, pupil participation in clubs and competitions, pupil feedback sessions and the use of photographs and short videos. We also measure impact through the PE Premium spend analysis.