Curricuum focus CASE STUDY
TO FUND OUR PE FACILITIES’ ‘Our pupils have a range of learning difficulties and disabilities, which means they cannot use the facilities available in mainstream schools. For over a decade, our aim has been to make the on-site PE facilities more inclusive. The curriculum has widened to include cycling, spin cycling, disc-golf, orienteering, and three years of swimming lessons for the younger pupils. We have received Sport England grants of £10,000 for a new adventure playground, £8,000 for our cycling club, and £5,000 for our table tennis club. PE is a successful and popular subject
‘WE’VE RECEIVED £23,000
at our school, and after-school clubs have exploded in the last three years – with every pupil now taking part. I have experience in writing funding bids
from a previous job, so the whole process has been fairly straighforward. I have found it especially beneficial to create templates and work from these with each application. Given that I only allocate 80 minutes a week for fundraising, this makes completing applications much quicker. Our next target is to raise £250,000 for a
new sports hall. Thanks to match funding provided by The Weston Society – an organisation that supports people with learning difficulties and disabilities – our target has been lowered to £62,500. The public’s response to the appeal has
been great, and our current total stands at £3,876. The Lions have also chosen us as their charity for this year and hope to raise up to £5,000 for the appeal. Tesco have agreed to sponsor us, too, and two students at the school are doing a sponsored cycle from Lands End to Weston in the summer. Local estate agents and the Rugby Football Union have also promised financial support. Our pupils love PE and they are so good
at it – we just wish we had the facilities to match. It is amazing to think that we could soon have a £250,000 facility!’ Tommy Barlow, Head of PE and Fundraising, Westhaven School, Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset (96 pupils)
So instead of focusing on sporting glory, shouldn’t a child’s tness, and development of a life-long love of being active, be the main goal? If children enjoy street dance or yoga, or boxercise, why not provide this as an alternative to mainstream sports such as football and hockey? After all, having a good time whilst taking part in sport or being physically active affects whether children are likely to take up the activity regularly.
Time for a new approach
Short, sharp daily initiatives are incredibly effective for getting blood owing and brains alert. Encouraging families to walk or cycle to school is obvious, but rarely has suf cient impact. Which is probably why many schools are introducing a daily workout such
as Wake Up, Shake Up – a series of quick workouts to music. Some schools have even hit the headlines with their tness initiatives. Following the realisation that virtually all of their pupils were un t, St Ninian’s Primary School in Stirlingintroduced a daily one-mile run for all of their pupils. And at Oxley Park Academy staff
and pupils do the traditional Maori ‘haka’ every morning! Steve Roberts, Managing Director of Fit4Schools (
)
which delivers PE programmes to schools, agrees that we need to adapt. ‘Not so long ago pretty much everybody played sports, whether
recreationally in the playground, or at local clubs. Nowadays, one of the most important issues, whether we like it or not, is that sport isn’t for everyone. So we need to nd activities that children enjoy. That’s why we go down the health and tness route. We do cover traditional sports, but we also, for example, do workouts to music.’ Some enterprising secondaries are already making progress
by installing tness suites. It’s obviously not a cheap option, but the Headteacher at Woodbridge High School, which recently installed high-tech equipment, says that their new state-of-the-art tness gym and activity studio are packed every day at lunchtime and after school. This is not to say that sporting excellence should
be forgotten. There are many children who adore competing, and many schools that excel in competitive sports. However, in the state sector at least, longer-term success is elusive. Around half of our 2012 Olympic medalists came from the independent school sector, then at 18 we lose talented pupils to the US, where they can combine sport with academic study. But this could be set to change, with over 20,000 schools now involved in the Government’s School Games framework, which is designed to give young people of all ages and abilities the chance to participate in competitive sport.
But the picture for our future Olympians may be looking up. Investment to help schools deliver swimming tuition is expected as part of the Government’s Sporting Future strategy (a report is due by the end of the year). And an extra
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