Our outdoor gym!

What is sports premium?

Ofsted’s last national report into Physical Education (PE) (February 2014) noted that a major weakness in some primary schools was the lack of specialist subject knowledge among teachers. There was also clear evidence of a lack of pupil’s participation in sports competitions, festivals and extra-curricular sports clubs, including those at lunchtimes. It was found that, even in schools known to have strong practice in PE, there is further need to develop teacher’s knowledge and skills and that these schools should allow children to partake in competitions or sporting activities more frequently.

In order to combat this, the government decided to provide additional funding of £150 million each year from 2013 to improve provision of physical education and sport in primary schools. This funding is ring-fenced and therefore can only be spent on provision of PE and sport in school. Each school receives £8000, plus £5 for every child age 5 as recorded in the January Census. Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of PE and sport they offer.

This means that the premium should be used to:

• develop or add to the PE and sport activities that your school already offers
• make improvements now that will benefit pupils joining the school in future years

Great Sampford Community Primary has chosen to invest this funding in the following ways:

Improving Teacher knowledge:

We currently work with Prestige Sport coaches to teach a range of PE lessons from Early Years through to Year 6.

We have a coach who delivers a huge range of sporting activities including: tag rugby, gymnastics, dance, football, dodge-ball, cricket, rounders, athletics, basketball, tennis, archery, fencing and multi-skills.

All teachers are required to attend these lessons and team teach alongside the sports coach in order to increase their professional knowledge and confidence when teaching the lessons independently in the future. 

As a member of the Uttlesford Schools’ Sports’ Partnership we also benefit from a wide range of INSET opportunities organised by our secondary colleagues.

By using the Sports Premium to fund these specialist teachers in school we have seen the participation from all children increase significantly by the wide range of activities they offer and attainment is shown in the progress observed by each class teacher in the assessment of PE on a termly basis. 

PE Lessons:

Every child has at least two PE lessons a week, all led by a sports coach.  Years 3 and 4 swim at the local pool - these lessons are taught by a qualified swimming teacher.

Through swimming lessons the children are taught to: swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres; use a range of strokes effectively; and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

Competitive opportunities:

Competitive opportunities are always hard to offer in the small rural community. In order to try and combat this we use some of our funding to subscribe to the Uttlesford Schools’ Sports’ Partnership (USSP). This gives us access to inter-school competitions run by the school games organiser as well as a range of different  sports festivals. This set-up offers children of all different abilities the opportunity to ‘compete’ against children from a range of different schools and has allowed us to become more inclusive. We can offer a competitive experience for both the most and least able children at our school and from the children in Year1 right through to those in Year 6.

Our children have participated in athletics, rounders, cross country, rugby and cricket 3 tees competitions as well as dance and multi-skills festivals.

Equipment:

We have also used a portion of our funding to buy new equipment to support some non-traditional sports such dodgeball and three tees cricket. We have also introduced new equipment to improve our traditional sports of football, rugby, athletics, tennis and cricket. Our sports ambassadors who work with the Partnership to help deliver extra opportunities for the children across the school as well as organising house competitions. 

Swimming

Currently our Year 6 cohort have;

77% Can swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres 

62% Can use a range of strokes effectively

62% Can perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

• GOV.UK PE and sport premium for primary schools.

SPG report for 24/25 in HTML format.