Sports Premium
St Mary’s Primary School PE and Sports Grant
The Government is providing funding to improve provision of physical education (PE) and sport in primary schools. This funding is being jointly provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport, and will see money going directly to primary school Head Teachers to spend on improving the quality of PE and school sport for all their children.
Schools will have to spend the sport funding on improving their provision of PE and sport, but they will have the freedom to choose how they do this.
PE and Sport Premium
At St. Mary’s, we value the importance of physical activity on the health, mental health and well being of our children. We actively encourage all children to engage and participate in a variety of sports. We have excellent links with school sports development teams and local clubs to offer a wide range of activities and opportunities outside of school. Our aim is to encourage our children to be healthy, active individuals who continue to make healthy, active choices for life.
St. Mary’s has been granted £17,488.00.
What does the Sport Premium mean for St. Mary’s?
‘Schools should use it to make additional and sustainable improvements to the PE, sport and physical activity they provide’ (DfE 2023)
At St. Mary’s, we will do this by:
- Increasing all staff’s confidence, knowledge and skills in teaching PE and sport by having specialist coaches in from AFC Fylde. School staff are to observe these lessons to ensure CPD. AFC Fylde will offer some in house training/ mentoring for all school staff promoting differentiation and progression in all areas of PE. This will benefit not only our current pupils, but our future pupils also, ensuring effective sports teaching.
- Increasing engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity and sport and offering a broader and more equal experience to all pupils. We have completed ‘pupil voices’ questionnaires to ask the children what extra sporting clubs they would like to see on offer. We are increasing our lunchtime clubs and after school club opportunities. We are now offering 4 lunchtime extra curricular clubs for both key stages. There is a different sporting club on offer each night after school. We will continue to complete ‘pupil voice’ questionnaires termly to ensure the maximum uptake of these opportunities. Children who are ‘Pupil Premium’ or regular bus users, will be offered priority to our lunch time clubs as this has been identified as a barrier for some of our children.
In Summer term 24, we are planning on offering pupils ‘top-up’ swimming lessons and water safety for pupils who have completed the core swimming lessons but who still do not meet national requirements.
- Raising the profile of PE and sport across the school, to support whole school improvement. We are introducing a new PE assessment to be used from Autumn term 23. These assessments will be used to offer extra support to children who we feel aren’t meeting the required level by being able to offer support through our ‘gross motor sensory circuits’, resources to ensure sessions are accessible to all such as ‘rippled easy grip balls’ or by being able to offer the child a place in a lunchtime/ afterschool club to promote the required skills. These assessments will also identify children who we feel are ‘more able’ or ‘talented’ and ensure they are challenged and have their needs met accordingly.
From Autumn term, we are introducing ‘Sports Leaders’. These are some of our older children who will set up games and activities for the rest of the school. This will benefit both sets of children as will encourage leadership skills for the older children, as well as supporting the younger children with support in certain areas as well as ensuring access to ‘moderate to vigorous’ physical activity.
- Increase participation in competitive sport. In this previous school year (2022-2023), we had a goal to offer every child in KS2 the chance to represent our school at some form of sporting club. We were successful with this and moving forward, our goal for academic year (2023-2024) is to offer all children from year one upwards the chance to represent St. Mary’s in a sporting event outside of school.