Sports


Teaching effective, high quality sport


How can school leaders support their teachers to lead PE effectively and to ensure that their pupils experience high quality PE? Headteacher Tom Donohoe offers his strategies and advice


cannot have been the only headteacher moved by the success of our Olympians this summer. As a PE specialist from my teacher training more than 20 years ago, I have always had an active interest in encouraging children to participate in sport. Indeed my current school, Anton Junior, where I have been headteacher for the last 10 years, has a reputation in Hampshire as being keen to participate in any sporting activity available. You may have been one of the schools that used our freely available Olympic Planning Resource that my teachers worked hard to produce. In the six months leading up to the 2012 Games, the Olympic section of our school website had more than 33,000 hits and we received hundreds of emails from across UK and the world.


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After the success of our sporting heroes this summer, the focus will once again be on schools to provide opportunities for children to follow in the footsteps of our Olympians.


The question is what are we doing to ensure that our youngsters receive high quality PE lessons in the primary school curriculum? Additionally, what sporting activities are we providing that will foster a love of sport that children will retain into their adult life?


My aim has always been to provide PE opportunities for children to participate in and enjoy and while I am keen to ensure that the most able are given the chance to compete at the highest level, my priority has always been on participation over elitism.


I am fortunate to have a number of teachers on my staff who have a strength in sport and I was able to support one young teacher, Jodie Williams, in her successful application to work as a PE advanced skills teacher (AST) across our local authority. Jodie has had an incredibly positive impact in a huge number of schools and although ASTs will cease to exist next Easter, I am optimistic that she will be able to continue to support school sport in one guise or another.


The fact that Jodie has been in such high demand by so many schools is an indication that there are a high proportion of primary teachers who


acknowledge that they could use support, advice, training and resources to improve their teaching of PE.


This view has been reinforced by a study that Jodie has undertaken as


part of her Master’s dissertation. She focused on initial teacher training (ITT) and the way in which it prepares new teachers to specifi cally deliver lessons in PE.


Although relatively small-scale, Jodie’s fi ndings were worrying. There were 12 trainee teachers who were interviewed about their readiness to teach PE, both as a result of their ITT programme and their experience in schools. The study looked at all the traditional routes into teaching including BA.Ed, PGCE and GTP. All the trainees had concerns about teaching gymnastics and dance and most seemed slightly more content to lead games lessons. On average, the trainee teachers only received between six and nine hours of PE tuition during their course. This was intended to leave them ready to lead their class in what most students felt was a challenging subject to teach. So I would like us to consider how we as headteachers can help and support our teachers to lead PE effectively and ensure that our pupils experience high quality PE.


While we are by no means perfect here at Anton, we have worked hard and are confi dent in our PE provision; the week of PE training that we provide for PGCE students from a local university each year certainly receives very positive feedback. Here are some of the strategies that have worked in our school and some of the planning we have produced.


Friday afternoon displays


A strengths and weaknesses audit with our staff identifi ed gymnastics as the main area of training needed for our teachers. As a PE specialist I was able to work alongside the subject co-ordinator to produce user-friendly unit plans for each year group. These plans were for blocked gymnastics units – fi ve afternoons of gym so that children in each class were participating in gym every afternoon for a week, culminating in simple gym displays on the Friday.


Whole-school training to put the plans into practice was arranged during a couple of after-school twilights. Also, in the fi rst year of this initiative we offered teachers the chance to have their gym either taught for them or to team-teach it with an experienced colleague. Our aim was to set teachers up to succeed so that there was no reason for the initiative to fail. I also wanted to hold teachers to account as I suspected that in the past some teachers would fi nd reasons to not teach PE. By having the Friday afternoon displays in the diary, it ensured that each class would have to share their work. The fi rst year we did the displays to other classes, but since then we have invited the parents of that class to watch their children perform. These dates are issued at the start of the year and have now become a tradition.


Spreading best practice The year after, our gymnastics planning was “purchased” off us by a number of schools (for the cost of one day’s supply). Since we have had an AST on our staff we want as many schools as possible to benefi t, so we now make it freely available to any teacher, headteacher or school (more details at the end). The resource includes a fi ve-day unit plan for each of the four junior year groups and we have recently produced plans for key stage 1. These lessons do not have to be taught in


Good sports: Pupils at Anton Junior try a wide range of sporting activities (all photos)


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