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Review of School Sports Funding 2021-2022 Action Plan

Maintain Participation rates in competitive sport with no sports coach/apprentice

Throughout the year we have continued to use the opportunities made available by North Charnwood. As a school, we have participated in various ‘in school’ events including; KS2 Sportshall Athletics and Active travel month.

The KS2 Sportshall athletics competition involved several athletic stations, where the children were responsible for recording their timings and results. We also participated in the Active Travel month in Autumn 2. This opportunity was a great success with lots of children and parents getting on board with the initiative, encouraging children to actively travel to school, by walking, scooting, or cycling, instead of commuting by car. There were a total of 4828 active travels for October, which is much higher than an average month in the school year.

Also in the Autumn term. Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 were given the opportunity to participate in the Cross Country Competitions taking place at Prestwold Hall. This event has proven popular in previous years with the KS2 children and we saw this as a great opportunity this year. There were however only a few children who took part in this event across the 4 year groups, a drastically lower participation rate than previous years. Going forward, if this event were to happen again, we would take responsibility for ensuring that we are proactive in finding out when the competitions will take place so that the information is sent to parents in a more timely manner and promote the cross-country event in assembly. Hopefully this will increase participation figures.

We have taken part in a variety of events within the North Charnwood school sports offer and placed better in most events than we have done in previous years. These events include; Year 3-4 Table tennis- 2nd place overall, Year 5/6 Table Tennis - Girls came 3rd, Year 6 Football - Quarter finals, Year 6 Girls Football - 7th place out of 14, Year 3/4 Cross country - 2nd overall, 1st, 2nd and 3rd medals, Year 5/6 Cross Country - made it to the championships, Year 3/4 Football - 2nd place, lost on penalties in the final, Year 5/6 Dodgeball - lost in the quarter finals, Year 3/4 Netball - 4th place out of 12 schools, Year 5/6 Badminton - 5th out of 11 schools, Year 5/6 Netball - Lost in the Quarter finals, Year 5/6 Hockey - 2nd in the group stage, Year 5/6 athletics - 2nd overall, Year 3/4 hockey - Group stage, Year 5/6 Tag Rugby - Group stage, Year 5/6 Cricket – Champions! What a great end to the sporting year.

This year, in preparation for all events we continued to hold practise sessions beforehand, to maximise pupils’ knowledge and confidence. This has proven to be beneficial for the children and is something that we would like to continue, as previously mentioned, in all events performance and determination has been higher than previous years, allowing us to place higher in the rankings against other schools in most of the events that we have attended. This year around 200 children have attended an after school sporting event.

To maximise participation from a range of children across the school in inter school competitions, we will promote these during assemblies (this will be easier next academic year when we resume face to face assemblies) and on the PE notice board.

Maintain a broad range of inclusive extracurricular clubs available to all children (when COVID restrictions allow)

During this academic year, we have offered a range of after school sporting clubs, which have differed each term. There have been a variety of clubs on offer for both KS1 and KS2 children, these include; Football, Netball, TAG Rugby, Rounders, Athletics and many more. Some clubs were initiated to be in line with the upcoming sporting events in each term, which again has increased our chances of success at these events. Over each term we have had a high participation rate in our after school sports clubs, led by Mr Harris in the Autumn term joined by Miss Heard in the Spring term and Mrs Fowler in the Summer Term. In the Autumn term, 50 children across the school took part in two clubs. In the Spring term, we had 88 children attend, across the four clubs. Lastly, in the Summer term 128 children have attended after school sports clubs, across seven clubs.

One of our target after school sports clubs, was the Girls Get Active club, which was a strictly girls only club. This group was created and developed for girls who may be inactive or reluctant to participate in clubs, which boys attend. This club ran in line with the worldwide ‘This Girl Can’ initiative, aiming to promote physical activity to girls. This club had a positive effect on the girls who attended as evidenced in their PE lessons.

Next year, we would see greater participation figures across the school with a wider  range of sporting clubs available to the children from the Autumn term. As we can see from the participation figures this year, clubs have been extremely popular and spaces have been allocated within hours of being sent out to parents, even when the number of clubs available, increased term on term. It may also raise the profile of clubs, to be mentioned in assemblies and on the PE notice board, as at the moment only parents are notified through parent mail.

Continuation of the profile of PE being raised further with the promotion and celebration of clubs and achievements

During this academic year we have continued to promote the profile of PE, by; celebrating children’s sporting achievements with HOPS points and certificates, updating of PE notice board, and using the schools’ social media platform. This year, certificates have been handed out to children who have not only excelled in PE but to those children who have tried their best and put in effort to their lessons. This celebrated the children’s successes and achievements during their PE lessons and offered an incentive to children when participating in their PE lessons. Certificates were also handed out for children who participated in events, both virtual and face to face, across the year. At the end of the year, KS2 held a sporting achievement assembly where children were celebrated for; event participation, perseverance, cheering others, respect, and teamwork. All linking to the sports games values that pupils are reminded of in PE lessons and at events. Ideally, sporting achievement assemblies would run half termly for both key stages and the notice board could be updated each half term in line with these achievements.  

Self and peer assessment and personal best has continued to be a huge focus in PE lessons this year. Children have been encouraged to assess each-others performance in their PE lessons, after specific activities. This has led to the KS2 children furthering their critical thinking, identifying skills and attributes during a PE lesson, and ensuring that their peers know about the positives and can be encouraged to do the same in future PE lessons.

All sporting after school clubs have been a huge success, with up to 30 children in each. As the year went on, we were able to offer more sporting clubs, focusing on different elements of physical activity which encouraged a broad range of children across the school to attend. The clubs could be advertised to children as well as parents to encourage more of the school community to take part.

Unfortunately, our yearly trip to Loughborough University for the Town Sports athletics event, did not happen this year, as the event did not take place. We did however, hold a sports day for Pre-school and EYFS, KS1 & 2, Y3 & 4, and Y5 & 6. We held these separately due to the size of the year group cohorts and tailored each sports day and events within this to the children’s stage and ability. All children took part with KS2 children performing athletic type events and Early years and KS1 undertaking the more traditional style sports day activities.

Continue to link PE and Physical Activity with our school values and LORIC - Embedding Physical Activity into our daily schedule

The profile of Physical Education and Physical Activity in the school have been increased with the continuation of Sports ambassadors from last year’s Year 5 cohort, who were selected based on their PE performance and attitude during their PE lessons. At the beginning of the year, this programme was produced by the North Charnwood organisers for children in primary schools. This programme, did take a ‘back seat’ during the Spring term, due to COVID.  However, we have continued in school to use our Sports leaders to help with intra competitions such as sports day. Throughout the sessions, teachers focused on; Leadership, Organisation, Resilience, Initiative and Communication in line with our LORIC characteristics.

This year we celebrated Active Travel Month during October, where all children in the school were encouraged to be physically active each morning by walking, cycling, and scooting to school and recording their activity each morning. This was supported by ‘Shoesday’ where the children wore their non-school shoes for a day during walking week. As previously mentioned, the level of activity increased upon other years and activity was promoted throughout the month by teachers using our school values and LORIC to support.

Throughout the year, during their PE lessons, staff members teaching PE have been mindful of praise and encouragement in turn promoting; great effort, good technique, working well in a team, or showing leadership qualities.

Included in our daily activity is ‘Activate;’ a programme of physical movements to activate the body and minds of children in the classroom. This is a programme which interlinks with our PE Scheme making sure that activities and movements are progressive and age related.

Activate can be substituted in classrooms for alternatives such as; Cosmic Yoga, Just Dance and Go Noodle. Substituting the active 10 minutes a day for these alternatives helps to make sure that children are joining in and motivated daily. This has been monitored closely this year as some classes last year were falling short of the 10 minute a day requirement. This has been a great success this academic year with classes being given different options for their daily 10 minutes. Again, going forward, this will need to be made a priority within each class’ day to ensure that children are meeting the 2-hour requirement for PE in schools, per week,

PSHE/DT/PE/Science links (mindfulness)

Each year group had a PSHE/DT/mindfulness element planned into their curriculum to ensure that children had an understanding of healthy eating and effects on the body through PSHE/DT and science. This has been evident in each year group, through their tailored IPC units ,and can be seen in learning sequences across the school in these subjects.

As this was introduced last year through our newly structured curriculum, the children are beginning to develop the ‘sticky knowledge’ that they need to make links and move information into the long term memory, gaining a deeper understanding of health and wellbeing over time.

Next academic year, this could be further embedded into our school community by involving parents.