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.
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.
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.
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Swimming
Leighton Academy now use the new ASA School Swimming Charter for all school swimming lessons. Please find attached a copy of the award system which also details the requirements for each level.
Please do not worry if your child has private swimming lessons away from school, we assess each child at the beginning of their sessions to ensure they are working towards the correct award, and the awards do not follow the same criteria as swimming levels.
At the end of Year 6, all children are expected to meet the national standard of 25 metres and this must be reported by the school. All children will leave with a school swimming passport to show they have met the expected curriculum criteria for the awards they have achieved.
Children at Leighton Academy will have a 6 week block of swimming lessons each year from year 2 - year 6 at Nantwich Pool. All children are expected to attend swimming lessons with school unless there is a written medical exemption letter from the GP or hospital as this is a national requirement. Swimming is heavily subsidised by the academy but parents are asked to make a voluntary contribution to support this.
PE and School Sport Information
At Leighton Academy, we pride ourselves on the delivery of the PE curriculum to the whole school and the opportunities we offer for all pupils to participate at levels Inspire, Aspire and Celebrate competitions.
We have again achieved the School Games Platinum Kitemark Award for PE in 2022. An award we first achieved in July 2018 and we have maintained this status every year since. We have fantastic club participation. A variety of clubs are provided for KS1 and KS2, which focus on encouraging pupils to be physically active and maintaining lifelong participation. These clubs are taught by specialist PE teachers, class teachers, other staff and outside providers (including Sports Coaching Group, Crewe Alexandra and On Your Marks Athletics.
Each child receives a minimum of 2 hours of PE a week. PE lessons are taught by our PE Instructor and class teachers. Staff receive CPD from specialist teachers including gymnastics, dance, swimming and athletics.
The Chief Medical Officer guidelines state that all children and young people should engage in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity for at least 60 minutes each day. We embed physical activity into our everyday school life through our Marathon Kids incentive, PE lessons, extra-curricular clubs, competitions, and games for all.
Class teachers incorporate physical activity into their lessons through active maths and all pupils take part in active lunchtimes delivered daily by coaches from Sports Coaching Group. This year our Sports Leaders have developed '1 minute exercises' which can be completed in class to maintain activity levels, provide brain breaks and have fun. They have visited classes to complete training and demonstrate these with the pupils.
We have also organised football tournaments for both girls and boys and this is expanding to include more sports including netball and rounders. Our aim is to keep everyone as active as possible and have the opportunity to participate in competitions and tournaments.
We participate successfully in many level Aspire games including: football, gymnastics, netball, dodgeball, sports hall athletics, OAA and rounders. Over the past couple of years, we have won several of the Crewe and Nantwich Level Aspire competitions including: netball, football, gymnastics and sportshall competitions. As a result, we have qualified and participated in level Inspire county competitions in these sports.
In 2022 we have won the Crewe and Nantwich Town Sports (Level Aspire) and Sportshall competitions. We represented the area in the county Sports Hall indoor athletics tournament and won. We are the large school County champions.
In 2022 we have won the Crewe Alex led football competition in the Utilita Cup. Then we represented Crewe Alex in the Northern Final losing in the final to Sheffield Wednesday.
We were chosen to represent the Crewe and Nantwich area in the county Quad Kids competition this after participating in the local area tournament. Our team achieved the Fair play award.
In gymnastics we have participated in the Crewe and Nantwich gymnastics competition and progressed to the county finals. We achieved first place in one of the individual competitions.
Our aim is to provide all our pupils with as many opportunities to be active and foster a positive attitude to lifelong healthy, active lifestyles and to promote participation, respect, fairness and teamwork.
