At St. Mary’s Primary School, we recognise the contribution of PE to the health and well-being of the children. We believe that a varied PE curriculum and extracurricular opportunities have a positive influence on the concentration, attitude and academic achievement of all our children. Physical education and sport clearly contribute to the holistic development of young people and through participation in sport and physical education, the children learn more about key values such as teamwork, fair play and respect for themselves and others. There is significant evidence to show the positive effects of sport and exercise on children’s physical health, growth and development. Furthermore, sport also provides a healthy environment for young people to learn how to deal with competition and how to cope with both winning and losing.

What is the Sports Premium?

The government provides schools with additional funding to support the delivery and development of sporting activity in schools. The funding is being jointly provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport, and will see money going directly to primary schools to spend on improving the quality of sport and PE for all their children.

It can be used as follows:

• hire qualified sports coaches to work with teachers
• provide existing staff with training or resources to help them teach PE and sport more effectively
• introduce new sports or activities and encourage more pupils to take up sport
• support and involve the least active children by running or extending school sports clubs, holiday clubs and Change4Life clubs
• run sport competitions
• increase pupils’ participation in the School Games
• run sports activities with other schools.