Sports Premium

All young people should have the opportunity to live healthy and active lives. A positive experience of sport and physical activity at a young age can build a lifetime habit of participation, and is central to meeting the government’s ambitions for a world-class education system.

Physical activity has numerous benefits for children and young people’s physical health, as well as their mental wellbeing (increasing self-esteem and emotional wellbeing and lowering anxiety and depression), and children who are physically active are happier, more resilient and more trusting of their peers. Ensuring that pupils have access to sufficient daily activity can also have wider benefits for pupils and schools, improving behaviour as well as enhancing academic achievement.

The School Sport and Activity Action Plan set out government’s commitment to ensuring that children and young people have access to at least 60 minutes of sport and physical activity per day, with a recommendation of 30 minutes of this delivered during the school day (in line with the Chief Medical Officer guidelines which recommend an average of at least 60 minutes per day across the week).

The PE and Sport Premium can help primary schools to achieve this aim, providing primary schools with £320m of government funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of the PE, physical activity and sport offered through their core budgets. It is allocated directly to schools so they have the flexibility to use it in the way that works best for their pupils. The PE and Sport Premium survey highlighted the significant impact which PE and Sport has had in many primary schools across England.

Ofsted’s new Inspection Framework, which came into effect from September 2019, gives greater recognition to schools’ work to support the personal development of pupils, such as the opportunities they have to learn about eating healthily and maintaining an active lifestyle. Inspectors will expect to see schools delivering a broad, ambitious education, including opportunities to be active during the school day and through extra-curricular activities. Schools should consider how they use their PE and Sport Premium to support this.

How the PE and Sports Premium is used:

Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of their physical education (PE), physical activity and sport.

This means that you should use the premium to:

• develop or add to the PE, physical activity and sport that your school provides
• build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years

Schools should use the premium to secure improvements in the following 5 key indicators:

Engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity

For example by:

• providing targeted activities or support to involve and encourage the least active children
• encouraging active play during break times and lunchtimes
• establishing, extending or funding attendance of school sport clubs and activities and holiday clubs, or broadening the variety offered
• adopting an active mile initiative
• raising attainment in primary school swimming to meet requirements of the national curriculum before the end of key stage 2. Every child should leave primary school able to swim

Profile of PE and sport is raised across the school as a tool for whole-school improvement

For example by:

• encouraging pupils to take on leadership or volunteer roles that support sport and physical activity within the school (such as ‘sport leader’ or peer-mentoring schemes)
• embedding physical activity into the school day through active travel to and from school, active break times and active lessons and teaching

Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport

For example by:

• providing staff with professional development, mentoring, training and resources to help them teach PE and sport more effectively to all pupils, and embed physical activity across your school
• hiring qualified sports coaches to work alongside teachers to enhance or extend current opportunities

Broader experience of a range of sports and activities offered to all pupils

For example by:

• introducing new sports and physical activities (such as dance, yoga or fitness sessions) to encourage more pupils to take up sport and physical activities
• partnering with other schools to run sport activities and clubs
• providing more (or broadening the variety of) extra-curricular activities after school in the 3 to 6pm window, delivered by the school or other local sport organisations

Increased participation in competitive sport

For example by:

• increasing pupils’ participation in the School Games
• organising, coordinating or entering more sport competitions or tournaments within the school or across the local area, including those run by sporting organisations.

These Good Practice Examples produced by Active Derbyshire and Active Notts give further suggestions for how your PE and Sport Premium might be used to deliver on the 5 key indicators.

The Association for PE has produced a PE and Sport Premium FAQ which may also be helpful in deciding how you wish to use your funding.

Active Mile

Where schools choose to take part in an active mile, you should use your existing playgrounds, fields, halls and sports facilities to incorporate an active mile into the school day and develop a lifelong habit of daily physical activity.

Raising attainment in primary school swimming

Swimming is a national curriculum requirement and by the end of key stage 2 pupils are expected to be able to swim confidently and know how to be safe in and around water. The 3 national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety are to:

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• perform a safe self-rescue in different water based situations
• use a range of strokes effectively

The premium can be used to fund the professional development and training that is available to schools to train staff to support high quality swimming and water safety lessons for their pupils.

The premium may also be used to provide additional top-up swimming lessons to pupils who have not been able to meet the 3 national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety - after the delivery of core swimming and water safety lessons.

Schools are required to publish information on the percentage of their pupils in year 6 who met each of the 3 swimming and water safety national curriculum requirements. Further details are in the online reporting section of this guidance.

Further information on training and resources, including advice on the use of the PE and Sport Premium, is available from Swim England.

Pupil Premium

What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil Premium is additional funding for schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers.

Purpose

Pupil premium is funding to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in schools in England. Evidence shows that disadvantaged children generally face additional challenges in reaching their potential at school and often do not perform as well as other pupils.

Funding paid to schools

School leaders are best placed to assess their pupils’ needs and use the funding to improve attainment, drawing on evidence of effective practice. It is up to school leaders to decide how to spend the pupil premium.

Evidence suggests that pupil premium spending is most effective when schools use a tiered approach, targeting spending across 3 areas, with a particular focus on teaching.

1. Teaching: Investing in high-quality teaching.

2. Targeted academic support: Additional support for some pupils focussed on their specific needs.

3. Wider approaches: Support for non-academic issues that impact success in school.

Read the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) pupil premium guide for information about the tiered approach to spending.

Non-Eligible Pupils

Schools can spend their pupil premium on pupils who do not meet the eligibility criteria but need extra support.

More information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium.