Physical Education

Physical Education

PE in Key Stage 3 is a two-year course. Sports include football, netball, basketball, rugby, trampolining, fitness, badminton, gymnastics, dance, cricket, rounders, athletics, softball and handball

PE develops students’ competence and confidence to take part in a range of physical activities that become a central part of their lives, both in and out of school. We develop a wide range of skills and the ability to use tactics, strategies and compositional ideas. As they perform, students are expected to think carefully about what they are doing, analyse the situation and make decisions. They reflect on their own and others’ performances and find ways to improve them.

All students follow two hours of ‘core’ PE at Key Stage 4 per week, working as individuals, in groups and in teams, developing concepts of fairness and of personal & social responsibility. They take on different roles and responsibilities, including leadership, coaching and officiating. Through the range of experiences that PE offers, they learn how to be effective in competitive, creative and challenging situations.

KS4 students may also choose to study PE for a GCSE/BTEC qualification. This has both practical and theory elements. During the practical element of GCSE students have had the opportunity to do a GCSE in climbing, lifesaving and personal survival.

Homework

Homework tasks are set once a week for both GCSE and BTEC.

Enrichment

The PE Department offers a broad and balanced extra-curricular programme, based upon the inter-schools competitive sporting fixture diary. The school has successful teams and a large sporting uptake:

Winter Sports: Boys’ and girls’ football, netball, rugby, basketball, table tennis and trampolining.

Summer Sports: Rounders, cricket, athletics and softball.

The Department regularly invites highly successful sportspeople to deliver masterclasses and to pass on their experience and skills. Tom Stalker, boxing gold medallist at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, has led coaching sessions. Also, Natasha Jonas, England’s top amateur boxer at light-middleweight, is a regular visitor and also Jenna Downing who is an inline skating champion regularly visits the school and runs leadership courses for all students. During the leadership programme we select sports leaders from KS4 to help run events both in school and in our local feeder primary schools.

We offer the ‘Living for Sport’ programme, coordinated by Sky Sports. Students develop their Junior Sports Leadership skills, running numerous events for local primary schools. Our netball teams are fortunate enough to be invited to the Netball World Series at the Echo Arena in Liverpool every November, an international televised event.

Students who represent the teams have the opportunity to compete against schools both nationally and regionally, this gives students the chance to experience high levels of sporting performance and demonstrates to them what level they could get to when hard work is evident.

The PE department also offer exciting opportunities for all students to go on sports tours all over the world. Previous tours have seen students go to Barcelona and Amsterdam to represent the school in football and Basketball. Alongside this opportunity students also get the chance to go on other sports trips such as the Harlem Globetrotters, Anfield tours, Tranmere rovers tours, Manchester united PGL trips, netball World Series and lots of other exciting events.