Physical Education

Physical Education: Intent, implementation and Impact

Intent:

For all of our pupils to leave Dashwood Banbury Academy physically literate and with the knowledge, skills and motivation necessary to equip them for a healthy, active lifestyle and lifelong participation in physical activity and sport.

At Dashwood Banbury Academy we understand that play, sport and physical activity hold the key to not only our pupils’ well-being in the physical sense, but also in terms of their mental health. We are aware that living in the 21st century, our pupils often struggle with their mental health whilst contending with the pressures of social media, test stress and shifts in personal relationships. Our key priority is to support our pupils to discover for themselves the joy of movement and activity; to use sport’s transformative power to benefit every pupil to become physically confident and resilient; succeed and excel in competitive sport and other activities to build character and embed life-long values of respect and fairness.

We are proud of our Physical Education curriculum which takes a skills centred approach, where the fundamental skills of agility, balance and co-ordination are taught and practised and are then applied to a range of modified sports. This approach motivates pupils and gives them the confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding that provides our children with the movement foundation for a lifelong participation in physical activity. We understand that a healthy child will:

• perform better academically across all subjects
• be a more confident individual
• have greater employability skills
• have higher levels of self-esteem

We strive to educate both our children and families to develop a greater understanding about how to live healthy lifestyles and make healthy choices. Working with community partners such as the school nurse team and SCARF we aim to ensure that our children and families receive the support, knowledge and opportunities they need around health and wellbeing.

Implementation:

We have a comprehensive Physical Education curriculum that has a clear progression of knowledge and skills to develop their agility, balance and coordination and that also develops their understanding of how sport can support their mental wellbeing, physical wellness and develop their character to give them life-long skills to be positive in our ever-changing world.

At Dashwood Banbury Academy we are dedicated to promoting fair play and building character through competition and give our pupils opportunities to compete in intra Level 1 competition. This may be held as a celebration at the end of a unit of learning.

Through our North Oxfordshire School Sports Partnership membership, we compete in many Level 2 and Level 3 festivals and competitions, forging strong links with Wykham Park Academy (an Aspirations Academy secondary school) and other primary schools in North Oxfordshire. We offer an extensive range of different and exciting extra-curricular clubs including HotShots basketball, football and multi skills. We work closely with sporting bodies such as the Football Association, The English Cricket Board/Banbury Cricket Club and Cherwell District Council, who deliver high quality curriculum and lunchtime activator sessions during the year.

Living near the River Cherwell and with a canal that runs through our town, we are committed to ensuring that all of our pupils access swimming lessons and achieve their 25 metres. This commitment is for our pupils’ safety and an additional step to ensuring that our pupils have opportunities to lead a healthy and active life. Pupils have weekly, year round swimming lessons in Year 4 and sessions in year 5 and 6 to ensure they have every opportunity to achieve their 25 metres and beyond. Each year group also has access to taster sessions which we have found to be a particularly successful way for children to ‘enjoy’ and become familiar with the water, gain confidence and be ready to learn to swim.

Physical Education will be implemented in the curriculum in a variety of ways:

• A minimum of 2 hours of PE will be taught weekly. Learning objectives will be clear and well sequenced in order to build upon the skills each session.
• Working with external partners, sessions are built into PE lessons or may be taught as PE Enrichment Days such as cricket days or extra-curricular clubs such as basketball.
• Strive to provide new and different extracurricular clubs to raise engagement such a roller-skating and martial arts
• Provide a wide range of opportunities for children to get active in class and on the playground:
• Additional sessions focusing on active learning are woven through lessons such as Active Maths and The Daily Mile to help re energize our pupils.
• Lunchtimes take a structured focus with activities set to provide our pupils with engaging physical activity and opportunities for independent play. Listening to pupil voice ensures that we structure activities to the interests of our pupils.

Intended Impact:

Through our whole school thread, our intended impact for each of our pupils is:

• To develop physical, mental and emotional literacy to enable our pupils to lead and sustain a healthy, active lifestyle in the present and understand how to embed for life
• To develop competence of fundamental movements and build understanding of the rules of a range of sports and activities to support engagement in competitive sports
• To develop the characteristics of a good sportsman understanding fair play and respect of others and build own character, resilience and desire to achieve personal best, develop self-esteem and self-efficacy

Physical Education Knowledge and Skills