What is the Sports Premium?
The government is continuing to provide primary school sport funding for the academic year 2023/24. The funding is being jointly provided by the Departments for Education, the Department for Health and Culture, Department for Media and the Department for Sport. The money goes directly to primary school headteachers to spend on improving the quality of sport and PE for all their children. Last year, this provided £16,000 for Holden Lane Academy. The money can only be spent on sport and PE provision in schools. The school is currently awaiting confirmation regarding the sum of funds being provided this academic year.
Purpose of the funding
Schools have to spend the sport funding on improving their provision of PE and sport, but they will have the freedom to choose how they do this.
Possible uses of the funding include:
- Hiring specialist PE teachers or qualified sports coaches to work alongside primary teachers when teaching PE
- New or additional Change4Life sport clubs
- Paying for professional development opportunities in PE/sport
- Providing cover to release primary teachers for professional development in PE/sport
- Running sport competitions, or increasing participation in the school games
- Buying quality assured professional development modules or material for PE/sport
- Providing places for pupils on after school sport clubs and holiday clubs
At Holden Lane Academy, we recognise the contribution of PE to the health and well-being of the children. In addition, it is considered that an innovative and varied PE curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities have a positive influence on the concentration, attitude and academic achievement of all children.
The governors agree that the money must be used so that all children benefit regardless of their sporting ability. We will continue to place a high priority on our PE provision and, as such, have invested in CPD opportunities. These have been provided by specialist sports coaches/companies who have delivered high quality lessons to the children, with staff observing and team teaching. To further enhance the PE curriculum, extra-curricular after school sports clubs have been provided.
Our Sports Funding allocation has enabled us to receive in-house CPD so that our staff continue to teach high quality PE lessons. Also, it helped us to extend our extra-curricular sports provision through employing more sports professionals and to take part in a local network of team and inter-school activities.
As part of the learning provided through Sports Premium funding, children are able to develop an understanding of the benefits of swimming for their fitness and life safety skills. Ensuring the safety of children around water and enabling them to feel confident swimming will equip them with skills that they will use for the rest of their lives.
By the end of Key Stage Two, pupils are expected to be able to swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance which is at least 25 metres, using a variety of different strokes to do so. Children will, also, be taught to use their understanding of life safety to perform safe self-rescue in a series of different situations. In 2022/23, 53% of the Year 6 children achieved the National Curriculum swimming award.
