Physical Education

Curriculum Statement and Implementation

The 2014 National Curriculum for Physical Education aims to ensure that all children:

develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities
are physically active for sustained periods of time
engage in competitive sports and activities
lead healthy, active lives

Within the teaching of Physical Education at St Mary’s, it is our intention to provide a curriculum which caters for the needs of all individuals, which incorporates sustained levels of challenge, through a wide range of high-quality activities. PE lessons at St Mary’s are taught by our qualified PE teacher, class teacher and sports specialists and each class have two hours of PE each week.

In our Physical Education lessons, children are able to:

Have an opportunity to participate in Physical Education which specifically caters for the individual’s level of development and need.
Secure their knowledge and further develop their abilities using a range of skills in a variety of sports.
Experience success in sport, both within a team and as an individual.
Develop good sportsmanship.
Understand and follow basic rules as well as create their own rules when required.
Experience positive competition.
Learn in a safe environment.
Develop a foundation for lifelong physical engagement, which leaves our primary school pupils leaving us as a physically active person.

Each term, assessment is completed through children taking part in year group specific core tasks, which are linked to their current learning topics. Children’s knowledge and skills are evaluated on whether they are working towards, secure or mastering in the given task. This data is then analysed along with monitoring evidence to plan the next term’s focus on the improvement of PE teaching.

In addition to PE lessons, we enhance our PE curriculum with a number of enrichment opportunities. These include intra and inter school competition, playground activities including training our year 6 pupils to become playground leaders and visitors attending school as part of our sporting opportunities week.

Our children have access to a wide range of activities both competitive and non-competitive which encourage all children to succeed and be physically confident. All lessons and sporting opportunities provide our children with the skills to have a physically active life.

Our high-quality Physical Education curriculum is also linked closely to our Aspiration curriculum driver. Our lessons inspire all children to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities. Children are also fully exposed to high level sport through exposure to famous athletes by watching videos of top level competition at world events such as Wimbledon, World Cups and the Olympics. Sport is also embedded in our curriculum through family learning opportunities, linked to major sporting events. This allows the children to develop a knowledge of where sport can take you in the world and the level of perform our children can aspire to reach.

In our PE lessons we also provided all children have opportunities to build character and communication skills in PE. All lessons provided opportunities for children to listen to peers, lead others and develop their own games including scoring systems, these skills developed in PE are important life skills that children will need in adult life. Our Catholic Virtues, British Values and important core sporting values such as fairness and respect are also embedded in our PE lessons.