Physical Education

At Discovery Academy, we believe that children learn their best when they are showing the Academy values of Discovering, Inspiring, Caring, Improving and Achieving within our curriculum. We believe in aspiration for all so want to create a world where the sky is the limit for all of our pupils; building pathways for all and focusing on personal and academic success and eventually progress to successful employment.  

Subject Intent: At Discovery Academy, we provide an engaging, strenuous, challenging and diverse physical education for all children. We teach children life skills that will positively impact on their future and we believe that physical education is at the centre of that. We strive to deliver a high-quality physical curriculum that inspires all children to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities. We strive to provide opportunities for pupils to become physically confident in ways which supports their health and fitness. 

We aim to develop pupil’s physical literacy whilst enhancing their enjoyment and knowledge of the subject, alongside teaching children how to cooperate and collaborate with others, as part of a team, understand fairness and equality of play to embed life-long values. We aim to educate all children about living a healthy life by providing lessons on healthy eating and how to keep their body healthy. We aim to promote healthy eating through the introduction of healthy snacks at break times for all children. At Discovery, we also strive to reduce the gender gap in participation in sports through a targeted approach to PESSPA (physical education, school sports and physical activity). We also recognise a deficiency nationally to dance and gymnastics so have these two areas within our curriculum.  

A bespoke Complete PE programme has been curated by the PE lead with the following foci: developing core skills KS1; applying these in KS2; experiencing a broad range of sports – particularly those where children enter without a great deal of prior experience (level starting points); and that skills are revisited to ensure progression and development.  

Implementation: The PE coach is to use the Complete PE scheme set out by the PE Lead. The content of the curriculum is designed to build of previous knowledge and skills, particularly in 2-year cycles, where often the same sports/activities are revisited and then those core skills are developed further in a different context later in the curriculum. Each week the children will participate in a sporting skills lesson as well as lesson that is dedicated to either dance or gymnastics. Year 5 children swim once a week for the first two terms and any children who have not met the National Curriculum standard will continue to attend for the summer term of Year 5 and 6 if necessary.  

We encourage children to evaluate skills where appropriate, providing opportunities in lessons to do so, along with delivering opportunities for the children to collaborate and compete with each other. Coaches provide differentiated, suitable learning opportunities for all learners, matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the individual. Each year group works towards the development and achievement of key objectives; these objectives have been developed in line with the National Curriculum which is incorporated into our scheme of work, developed by our PE Lead. 

A wide-range of sports and activities are available for all key stages on the playground during break and lunch times. Midday Assistances help to coordinate these alongside PE ambassadors. A specific area of the playground is dedicated to girls’ sports in order to promote participation. 

Three times a week there are sports clubs after school. These offer a wide variety of sports and activities. Whilst there is a nominal fee for this, we will ensure that finance is never a barrier to participation. Where possible, these clubs are used to allow children the opportunity to hone skills so they can participate in inter-school competitions. The school also has two football teams (mixed and girls) that practice twice weekly during lunch times. Both teams regular play in competitive matches. 

A PE star is nominated for each class I the weekly assembly. We welcome and celebrate out of school achievements also and these are recognised weekly in the celebration assembly as children are invited to share in their successes with the school.  

Impact: The impact of PE at Discovery Academy can be determined using teacher assessment-led data. On a termly basis each class provides assessment data collated during PE lessons in accordance with each year group’s key objectives. This assessment data clearly indicates individual pupil progress made over the course of the whole academic year, and within each key objective statement, each child can be deemed ‘working towards the expected standard’, ‘at the expected standard’, or ‘exceeding the expected standard’ in relation to that particular statement. Assessment data will also be recorded from the children’s swimming lessons using Swimphony – this will document their progress and indicate which swimming level they have achieved. Children’s engagement and enjoyment is received through pupil conferencing with the PE Lead. This feedback is used to enhance lessons and opportunities moving forward.

Click here for PE Long Term Plan.