ST MARY'S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL

Being an Athlete         

Our Mission Statement

Celebrating Excellence through our Faith and Learning

Rationale for teaching PE at St Mary's 

Our children will leave St Mary’s with a positive relationship to physical activity and personal wellbeing. As physical activity promotes growth and development and has a positive influence on academic achievement, it is essential that both teachers and children are aware of its importance.

At St Mary’s we provide a broad and balanced programme of physical education with activities designed to be enjoyable and purposeful, whilst inspiring all pupils to succeed. We follow progressive PE planning so that the children build upon their prior learning and are increasingly challenged as they continue their journey through the school. To ensure staff are confident to teach the whole child through sport, raise the quality of teaching, we aim to follow our PE scheme rigorously. This supports staff to develop their CPD, with the use of videos available for clear modelling and detailed progressive planning, understanding of a wide range of sports and equips them with the skills they need to deliver quality PE lessons.

To allow pupils to excel in competitive sport, we will enter a range of competitions across both key stages. This promotes fair play, cooperation, sportsmanship and playing within the rules. By doing this the pupils at St Mary’s will further develop their confidence and self-esteem when they are representing the school in sporting competitions. Participation for inter competitions is monitored to ensure that as many children as possible have an equal opportunity to take part and embed these important values. At St Mary’s the children enjoy the daily run or skip, this promotes physical fitness, personal challenge and encourages a positive attitude towards an active healthy lifestyle.

Pupils will:

• Be provided with two high quality PE lessons a week.
• Build upon prior experiences so that children can regularly revisit, refine and develop their skills
• Participate in regular active breaks.
• Complete a form of daily exercise.
• Be competent and confident swimmers, swimming at least 25 metres, and perform safe self-rescue in water-based situations, by the time they leave St Mary’s.
• Experience a range of sports and physical activities, which will develop fundamental skills to apply to a broad range of opportunities.
• Learn the importance of teamwork, sportsmanship and collaboration through team games. –
• Engage in competitive (both against self and against others) and co-operative physical activities, in a range of increasingly challenging situations.
• Take part in outdoor and adventurous activity challenges both individually and within a team
• Acquire positive attitudes towards PE and grow life-long healthy habits.

How do we teach PE at St Mary's?

Other:

• Sports leaders in year 5 and year 6. Providing other children in school with the games and skills to have active play times and embed an enjoyment in physical education.
• After school sports clubs. Multi skills club, netball club, dance club, gymnastics club, football club
• Sports visitors in to introduce children to a new sport, new club in the area and overall enthusiasm and enjoyment for physical education and sports.
• Sports week and sports day.  

How do we assess PE at St Mary's? (Impact)

We evaluate the impact of our physical education curriculum in the following ways:

Pupil achievement and progress

We measure pupil achievement – the acquisition of knowledge and skills – and progress using a number of strategies, including:

• Using the online Get Set 4 PE website reporting tool
• On-going teacher assessments, based on questioning in PE lessons, observations and pupil outcomes.
• Scrutiny of progress through pupil conferencing with children.
• Staff audits at the end of each academic year to address and problems, CPD support and general views and opinions.
• In conversations with children, teachers and school leaders ask questions relating directly to age-related expectations and to times when they might have needed more support or when they experienced greater challenge.
• Review meetings with Future Stars coaching, ensuring only the best physical education is being delivered at St Mary’s.

Pupil attitudes

We measure pupil attitudes using a number of strategies, including:

• Feedback during learning conversations and in pupil and parent/carer surveys
• Attitudes and behaviour in lessons across the curriculum
• The quality of their abilities to work collaboratively, and independently.
• Participation and organisation of PE kit- Coming to school wearing their PE kit on their PE days. 
• Attitudes- Children, particularly older children, will be encouraged to reflect on and self-assess their learning in terms of enjoyment and skills and knowledge achieved.  

PE progression at St Mary's:

• Progression of Skills       

Who to contact about PE at St Mary's:

Please contact the PE co-ordinator (Miss Eatherington) to talk about the PE curriculum at St Marys. Please email: admin@stmarysbs.org.uk