Intent:

PE at Southery Academy is one of many subject areas we are proud of here at Southery Academy and we continue to develop extensive plans to progress PE even further. As a school community, we feel that PE can have a considerable impact on children across their education as well as their time after Southery. Health and well-being are proven to be improved by good quality PE and the best PE provision tends to be a contributing factor in the improvement of self-esteem, likelihood of making positive behaviour choices and levels of confidence.

We intend to continue to ensure that PE at Southery Academy is a positive and enjoyable experience alongside providing our children with a platform to develop, achieve and excel in a variety of sports, both familiar and obscure. Southery Academy strives to supply children with the skills required to be good team players whilst being able to work together, follow sporting rules and be respectful sports people. Our aim is to develop competitive, respectful and resilient sports people with a sense of pride, who achieve fantastic outcomes. Our goal is to use an excellent PE offer to reach this aim, by ensuring we provide the children with the skills and knowledge of each unit that they cover, and then recapping, building on and sequencing these skills and their knowledge.

Implementation:

Our children are taught PE sessions on a weekly basis by our Sports Instructor using a detailed PE curriculum developed by the PE Lead. Our instructor and PE Lead work closely together to develop the subject and ensure that the children are getting the absolute best PE offer possible. Our children are encouraged to become respectful sports people that can excel and problem solve. Our PE curriculum provides our children with the opportunity to build their confidence, resilience and teamwork skills with a sense of pride. Working closely with Emneth Academy has enabled us as an Academy to improve our provision of PE and being able to view shared resources and ideas has further supported our PE development. The children are taught a variety of knowledge and skills that transfer through various sports and curriculum areas across the academic year and across their time through primary school. We follow a two-year cycle ranging from dance and gymnastics to athletics and games. The subject areas are planned specifically to develop the children’s knowledge and skills as well as to give consideration to times of the year, upcoming events and other cross-curricular links. Please see our PE subject maps for more detailed information.

The children of Southery Academy are offered the chance to participate in extra-curricular actives before school, at free-times and after-school too. A weekly multi-sports club facilitated by our Sports Instructor is available to both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 children on a half-termly rotation. Our PE Lead Mr Bothamley also runs a weekly competition preparation club for our various teams. Our Sports Instructor also runs a lunchtime sports club offering a variety of sports from basketball to hockey.

We also have some Key Stage 2 children who complete playleader/sports leader training annually. These children plan and run games for younger children at the Academy at lunchtimes, this increases their confidence, leadership and organisation skills.

The children of Southery Academy are also given to opportunity to represent the Academy in sporting events and competitions throughout the academic year both in school in our interclass completions and out of school alongside other schools. We attend events, festivals and competitions linked to our Downham cluster and West Norfolk School Sports Partnership (WNSSP), this helps to build resilience and confidence into our children's character. The children also spend time learning to swim in Year 3 and Year 4, they then spend more time swimming towards the end of Year 6 to give the children to best chance of being able to meet the national requirement of confidently and proficiently swimming over 25 metres, to use a variety of strokes and to perform safe self-rescue techniques. 

Impact:

Our children enjoy their PE sessions and opportunities. They enjoy being encouraged to confidently work independently and as a team in a variety of sporting situations. By looking at recent assessment data, we can see clear progress unit-by-unit and the children are developing into competitive sports people with a strong understanding of PE. Each PE lesson is started at our PE working wall, discussing the components of the lesson, referring back to existing knowledge, allowing time for recap on the knowledge organisers, reviewing key vocabulary and spending time to pose probing questions to the children, all with the support of the PE working wall. The lesson then concludes here, spending time reviewing the lesson and asking similar questions to check for understanding, development and for any misconceptions to be addressed. Even when children are unable to take part in a PE lesson, they are still learning. They take part in the lesson by using our ‘non-participation’ lanyards, which gives the children a key challenge for that lesson, this allows some learning and understanding to still take place, despite not being able to physically participate. Our PE lessons follow the subject map closely, sometimes additional lessons, taster sessions or stand alone activities are added to the sequence or to the end of lessons. This could be for a variety of reasons including weather, upcoming events or pupil voice.