1. Learning & Support
  2. Curriculum
  3. Physical Education

Physical Education

St Mary's was awarded the Silver Gamesmark award in July 2019. This is a recognition of the amazing commitment we have to sports and fitness in our small school.

The judging process looks at the school's coverage of the Physical Education curriculum, intra and inter sporting competitions, provision of extra curricular clubs, out of school fixtures and numbers of teams entered, tournaments and  percentages of pupils engaged in sport as well as the inclusion and development of more reluctant pupils.
 
For five years we have achieved  Bronze but with the addition of a new sports apprentice last year giving the school more capacity and the strong drive of all the existing staff, we have gone one better!

At St. Mary’s, we know that P.E. is an integral part of our curriculum. We believe that the subject inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in physically-demanding activities and helps them to become confident in a way which supports their health and fitness throughout their lives. 

We believe that our children should be physically active every day, whether through Daily Wake and Shake, Golden Mile, P.E. lessons, lunchtimes or extra-curricular activities. We also believe that children should have the opportunity to compete in sport and other activities that build character and help to embed values such as team-work, fairness and respect.

In Key Stage 1 the children will develop their fundamental skills which will give them the building blocks to become competent and confident in a range of physical activities. The children will develop these skills in three main areas: locomotion (moving in a range of ways that include: walking, running, jumping and dodging), stability (balancing) and object control (sending, receiving and controlling an object). They will use these building blocks to help them participate in team games, developing simple tactics for attacking and defending. In addition to this, they will learn and perform dances using simple movement patterns.

In Key Stage 2 the children will continue to apply and develop their fundamental skills linking them together to make actions and sequences of movement. They will use this to help them play a range of competitive games, applying basic principles of attacking and defending. In addition to this they will develop their flexibility, strength, technique, control and balance and will performing dances that use a range of movement. In P.E. lessons children will communicate, collaborate and compete with each other and they will be given the opportunity to evaluate their performances, recognising how they can improve their performance and celebrating their own success.

In Years 5 and 6, the children will be given swimming lessons by qualified instructors. During their lessons, they will be taught to swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres using a range of strokes effectively such as front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke. On top of this, children who are able to swim 25m will perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations. The children who do not meet the 25m expectation will be given additional swimming opportunities.  In Year 5 & 6, children participate in a range of Outdoor and Adventurous Activities which promotes collaboration, problem-solving and a positive attitude to physical activity.

Throughout the school many children will be given the opportunity to participate in festivals, tournaments, friendly and competitive matches.  We pride ourselves in entering all the local sporting opportunities and arranging friendlies from cross country to quadkids, rugby to netball often entering two teams despite being a small school. 

 Progression in P.E. will be assessed throughout each key stage through observations, photographs aand where possible, video recordings. An age-related assessment will be given to parents/carers through annual reports.