Sport at Holbrook

PE-Policy-May-2025

Curriculum Intent- What do we want children to learn?

Physical Education at Holbrook allows children to develop excellent knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. At Holbrook, these include dance, games, gymnastics, swimming and water safety, athletics and outdoor adventure activities e.g. orienteering. Physical Education involves thinking, selecting and applying skills, and it promotes positive attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle. This is something we highly value at Holbrook Primary School. We aim to work with our families so that every child makes healthy food choices and takes part in a good level of physical activity.

The PE curriculum is split into three key areas:

1) Motor competence: Motor competence embodies the physical aspect of PE. It helps us improve accurate movement, movement patterns, movement techniques and movement sequences, all of which are embedded into sporting activities. The PE curriculum is designed to ensure children can recall key points for success in movement and movement patterns. It allows children to demonstrate accurate, safe and efficient movement patterns within sport.

Our aims: • Pupils develop a secure knowledge of fundamental movements that becoming increasingly complex throughout the year group progression. • High quality teaching with specific and purposeful feedback to ensure development of movement and patterns • Pupils develop recall of key movements which allows for accurate demonstration of safe movement.

2) Rules, strategies and tactics: To be successful in sport, it is essential to show a clear understanding of the rules which leads children to develop both their tactical awareness and strategic understanding. At Holbrook our curriculum is sequenced to build on prior learning of basic rules of games, leading to applying tactics and finally showing clear strategies in game-based situations. Applying understanding of these three areas encourages a higher level of game-based play in which children can work as a team to outwit their opponent.

Our aims: • Pupils can name and demonstrate tactical awareness strategies showing context specific rules and understanding. • High quality teaching with specific and purposeful feedback to ensure development of rules, tactics and strategies.

3) Healthy Participation: A healthy, balanced lifestyle is central to our school ethos and closely aligns with areas of our ROK curriculum such as Food for Life and PSHE. The curriculum promotes safe practice, encourages active living, and highlights the long-term physical and mental benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Through a carefully sequenced approach, children deepen their understanding of balanced living and the role of exercise. They also have opportunities to apply this knowledge by practising safety in sports and reflecting on the positive outcomes of healthy participation.

Implementation- How are we going to achieve our intent?

How we put our aims into daily practice (Implementation) In all classes, children have the opportunity to participate in 2 hours of physical activity per week, with our ‘Daily Mile’, break and lunch time play equipment/ Play Leader activities, Forest School time, residential/non-residential educational visits, and extracurricular opportunities being used to supplement these active opportunities further. As required in the National Curriculum, we teach dance, games and gymnastics at Key Stage 1. In Key Stage 2 we teach dance, games and gymnastics, plus two other activities: swimming/water safety, and athletics. Our Outdoor and Adventurous curriculum is fulfilled through curriculum time, Forest School sessions and during residential trips (Year 3- Sleepover at school, Year 4- Flatford Mill and Year 6- Thorpe Woodlands). Swimming and water safety lessons are delivered through Years 3, 4, 5 and 6. PE sessions develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding and encourage them to perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. PE promotes an important understanding of children’s own bodies in action. It involves carefully selecting and applying the skills needed to complete a task, and promotes an awareness and positive attitude towards a healthy lifestyle. With this in mind, we encourage children to make independent and informed choices about their levels of physical activity and lifestyle within their school and personal lives. Within PE sessions at Holbrook, we as teachers aim to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding through a mixture of whole class teaching and individual, pair or group activities. Teachers draw attention to good examples of individual performance as models, and encourage the children to evaluate their own work as well as the work of other children. Within lessons, we give the children the opportunity both to collaborate and to compete using a wide range of resources. In all year groups children have a wide range of physical ability, which is challenged individually within curriculum sessions. We work hard to ensure that the curriculum is adapted so that all children have access to suitable learning opportunities. Personalisation of our curriculum intentions to meet the needs of each child is achieved in the following ways:

• Setting common tasks that are open-ended and can have a variety of results (e.g. timed events or small competitions)

• Setting tasks of increasing levels of challenge, where not all children complete all tasks as they are tailored to each child’s ability and progress (e.g. building up their skills towards the high jump) • Grouping children by ability where necessary to develop their specific challenge needs and skills (e.g. individual challenges within an activity for specific children)

• Providing a range of challenge through the provision of different resources (e.g. different gymnastics equipment)

Impact- What will it look like when we have achieved our intent?

There are so many ways we can demonstrate the excellent impact our curriculum design has on our pupils. Here are some examples:

• 2 winning teams in the RHS Cross Country Race 2025 (1st out of 27 schools for both teams)
• 3rd place in the Ipswich Schools Dance Competition 2025
• The FA presented with a trophy for giving equal access to the girls and boys football
• In 2024, our girls football team won the IPSSA league
• The school offers a broad range of extra-curricular provision to support our curriculum, such as boys & girls football, running, street dance, netball, basketball, rugby, athletics, tennis to name a few!
• ‘Taster sessions’ prior to the commencement of the club promote interest.
• Intra-school competitions introduce the children to ‘competing’ against those they know, and inter-school competitions see pupils compete against other schools, at local, regional and national levels.
• As a result of these growing opportunities and strong sporting provision, we are able to boast an amazing Gold School Games Mark Award. This is an incredible achievement and is one way we have demonstrated our commitment to sport and being active.
• With obesity growing as a serious health concern for children living in the UK, it is an inherent part of our school ethos to ensure Holbrook pupils are equipped with the strongest knowledge and tools to make healthy lifestyle choices. Alongside the other key areas of our curriculum (Forest School, Food for Life and Pupil Voice), children are encouraged and supported in making and promoting healthy lifestyle choices. For example, our Sports Committee planning a ‘Daily Mile’ which is now fully in action, a gardening club, Food for Life ambassadors, and Play Leaders. The Play Leaders have designed an activity/equipment rota to promote active play and sports at lunchtimes, which has been a great success and brought a great ‘buzz’ to the playground!
• Sport coaches leading structured games with whole year groups twice weekly

Holbrook Primary School’s P.E and Sports Premium Report

The Government have been providing Sports Premium funding since 2013/14. This funding is provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport and sees money coming directly into primary schools. Head teachers are to spend the money on improving the quality of sport and PE for all their children within their own setting.

Holbrook Primary’s Sports Premium funding allocation for the academic year 2024-2025 was £17,613. In 2025-2026 we will expect to receive £17,613.

Purpose of Funding

Schools are to spend the funding on improving their provision of PE and school sport, but we have the freedom to choose how we do this.

The DfE expect all pupils leaving primary school to be physically literate and equipped with the knowledge, skills and motivation necessary for them to engage in a healthy lifestyle and lifelong participation in physical activity and sport. They would like to see…

• The engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity – kick-starting healthy active lifestyles. Primary School pupils should undertake at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day, of which at least 30 minutes should be in school
• The profile of PE and sport being raised across the school as a tool for whole school improvement
• Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport
• Broader experience of a range of sports and activities offered to all pupils
• Increased participation in competitive sport

How did Holbrook Primary School spend the money for the 2024/25 academic year? How has it impacted upon pupils’ PE, physical activity, and sport participation and attainment? 

• We trained our year 5 and 6 children as play leaders. This meant that they could deliver purposeful, physical activities to younger pupils.
• We trained year 5 pupils to become table tennis umpires to encourage younger children to learn more about this sport… this has meant that the number of children using our table tennis table on our playground has dramatically increased.
• We completed pupil perceptions and, using the results, invested in new equipment to broaden the offer of sports provision…. there are now a wide range of opportunities for children to be physical at breaktimes (beyond football) on our school field.
• We have raised the status and profile of PE through whole school events such as the cycle / scoot to school week, walk to school week and displays in school showcasing physical activity.
• As members of IPSSA, we entered girls and boys teams into the small schools football league and we also took groups of children to cricket and netball tournaments…. this has meant that even more of our pupils are taking up sport outside of school.
• Our year 5 an 6 basketball team played against year 7 students from RHS… basketball is now a popular lunchtime activity.
• As a small school we are particularly proud of the successes we have had in inter school competitions… for example,  both in 2024 and 2025 our teams have been overall winners in the IPSSA Cross Country Championships and we came 3rd place in the Ipswich School Musical Dance Competition
• The FA have recognised our school for giving equal access to Girls and Boys football.
• As a whole school we completed the TCS Mini London Marathon 2025…this got everyone moving (children and adults) and gave us a chance to relaunch our Daily Mile initiative
• Our PSA and PE Lead organised a Colour Run to mark the end of Y6 SATs… again getting our school community positively enjoying and embracing physical activity

How does Holbrook Primary School plan to spend the funding for the Academic year 2025/26?

– The school will continue to focus on the professional development of staff. One of the key strands of the sports funding is to develop the skills of our school staff so that the quality of PE and sport that is delivered will continue to be excellent and further enhanced. This is an area which will be the most sustainable and have the biggest impact as a lasting legacy for the school. Teachers across the school will teach their PE lessons alongside a qualified sports coach from XtraTime Sport.  We also plan further enhance our PE curriculum by investing in the PE Hub so that teacher have access to high quality resources such as videos that model gymnastic moves.

– We will continue to raise participation in school competitions and will sign up for as many competitions as feasible… our newly appointed Sports Coach will be given an afternoon each week to organise this with support from the PE lead.  We will ensure maximum participation so that all children who would like to take part have access to the competitions. We enable all children to have the opportunity to represent their school during their school life.

– Encourage more children to walk, cycle and scoot to school. Investigate this further at various times during the year eg. is this a genuine daily statistic or was this an anomaly due to the weather? Continue to take part in initiatives such as Walk to School week.

– We will upgrade our Fresh Air Fitness exercise equipment to include a rowing machine.

-We will also look into the feasibility of installing a dance stage on the playground and sandpit on our school field.

How are we helping children to develop a healthy, active lifestyle?

This year we are are hoping to complete an Active Lives Survey (or equivalent) and use this to further improve.  We will also work closely with our in-house Catering team to ensure balanced, healthy meals are provided with a wide variety of choice, consulting the children on the development of the menus also. We are now looking to enhance our provision for cooking and growing even further and will be growing things to be used in the school kitchen.

Swimming at Holbrook

Swimming is an important skill and can encourage a healthy and active lifestyle.  In  accordance with the National Curriculum, schools must provide swimming instruction  either in Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2.

The programme of study for PE sets out the expectation that pupils should be taught to-

· Swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres

· Use a range of strokes effectively (for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke)

· Perform safe self rescue in different water based situations

The 2024-25 Sports Premium has been reported on via a Digital Online system as per DfE instruction. Please see below for the submissions.

Reporting PE sport grant expenditure 2024-25