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Let’s Finally Kick Old Style PE Schemes of Work into Touch - By Nick Powell, managing director, PE Partner

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  As I travel around the country speaking to teachers in lots of different primary schools, it often surprises me to see the approach many are still taking for both their planning and delivery of their physical education lessons.   Despite the abundance of high quality, well thought out PE curriculum choices schools now have access to, we see far too many still delivering PE through half term blocks focusing on a particular sport or activity. They are missing a huge opportunity to make a much bigger impact. Pretty much all of the leading curriculum products that have come to the fore in the past few years, including the SPIRALPE platform that we license, have been built by passionate, sports minded people.  Over the past 10 years I ’ ve had the opportunity to speak with lots of these PE curriculum developers at various events and through many social media interactions; usually in our slightly frustrating echo chamber, and here ’ s what I ’ ve found. Whilst there are o...

PE…Teaches Skills for Life - Louise Pavey, U

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  PE…Teaches Skills for Life Coherence and progression within the PE learning journey should be carefully considered to ensure that the physical skills are developed alongside the necessary knowledge so that children can know more and do more. Getting this right from the offset is essential for not only building the foundations for children to improve, but for them to take ownership of their own development journey too. Clearly communicating learning objectives (detailing the skills and knowledge) whilst fostering a collaborative learning environment, has the potential to unlock a platform for developing a whole wealth of other skills such as communication, problem solving and empathy alongside physical fitness. We are now seeing more and more of our education and sports specialists actively planning for and delivering PE in such a way that it purposefully teaches skills that are not just taught, develope d and built upon as part of the PE lesson, but skills that are transfer...

Working Together to Improve our Health: Louise Pavey, SPIRALPE UK Lead, on Tackling Obesity as Rates Stabilize in England

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Working Together to Improve our Health This week, Dr Clare Hambling (NHS clinical Director for Diabetes and Obesity) has highlighted the importance of working together to tackle the issues that contribute to obesity with a shared vision of helping people remain as healthy as possible. Whilst positive figures are published in this week’s news article showing that obesity rates in England have started to stabilise for the first time in 20 years, ( https://dentistry.co.uk/2024/09/25/obesity-rates-in-england-stabilise-for-first-time-in-20-years/ )  there is still so much to be done to ensure we are all effectively supporting those who are overweight, at risk of becoming overweight and promoting an overall healthy, active lifestyle for everyone. In recent years, incentives such as the sugar tax, PE premium and Olympic funding have been introduced and the trend is now moving in the right direction, but there is still so much to be done. In primary schools we are in a hugely influenti...

More than just PE - Louise Pavey, SPIRALPE UK lead and former headteacher, talks about the opportunity presented by National Fitness week.

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          More than just ‘PE’… So many associate PE with physical fitness or learning how to perform within a specific sport. PE is so much more than a game in the school hall or running laps of the school field. It should be more than learning the skill set of a specific sport or developing our future elite athletes. A positive PE experience can ignite a passion for movement and sports that lasts a lifetime. It has the potential to shape your lifestyle and future health. Getting PE right from an early age can be lifechanging!  There is no doubt that PE should develop and master the physical skills whilst deepening the knowledge associated with physical activity across a range of contexts. PE should teach us, ‘why’ …it gets more of us interested! Where a culture and love of being physically active is embedded across a community, we can reach, engage and motivate more children. The opportunities we provide, have the power to enable our young people...