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


Working Together to Improve our Health

A PE teacher giving high fives to primary school children in a gym as part of a SPIRALPE fitness session, encouraging teamwork and physical activity.
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.

A PE teacher instructing primary school students in a hockey game outdoors as part of a SPIRALPE lesson, promoting physical activity and teamwork in schools.
In primary schools we are in a hugely influential position to be able positively impact our children and young people. We have the opportunity to positively shape what is often a child’s very first experience of being physically active alongside peers. Where PE is accessible, physically active, fun, achievable and progressive for pupils is where we will see more children enjoying, engaging and feeling like they can achieve and succeed. Where we can achieve this from a young age and nurture a love of being physically active, we have a greater chance of inspiring our future generation to live active, healthy lifestyles in so many ways.

"SPIRALPE ensures the children have a progressive and sequenced curriculum that is knowledge and skills rich and one that they enjoy. It also gives the children teamwork skills and the ability to further develop their personal qualities such as determination, courage and confidence. It is without doubt the most popular subject at Morley Victoria" ~ Jo Wood (Head Teacher) Morley Victoria Primary School. Ofsted Outstanding (PE Deep Dive) December 2023.







Children taking part in one of the many SPIRALPE curriculum lessons in the school playground

SPIRALPE ensures variety and challenge and enables children to explore a range of skills and sports whilst deepening their knowledge and understanding of physical activity (something we already know has the potential to improve engagement over time). Ensuring success for all children, no matter their background, ability or previous experiences, has the ability to create a physically active culture across the whole school community and beyond.

“In our recent PE deep dive, the words Ofsted used were, ‘It is beyond PE.’ Since subscribing to SPIRALPE, year on year our student surveys show this to be our most popular subject.”  ~ Kevin Precious (Assistant Head Teacher) Morley Victoria Primary School


Being physically active should be fun and accessible with a long term goal of developing this type of lifestyle for all. The SPIRALPE community promotes a lifelong engagement and enjoyment of sport and physical activity, not just as part of the PE curriculum, but across the curriculum and beyond. We’re now reaching more and more pupils, improving their PE experience and promoting active, healthy lifestyles long beyond their primary school years.  



How will you respond to the call for action? 

‘We need to work with the rest of society to tackle the issues that contribute to obesity to help people remain as healthy as possible.’  Dr Clare Hambling.


Louise Pavey

SPIRALPE UK Lead

www.spiralpe.co.uk


Check out our other blogs here: 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Image
          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...
Read more

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

Image
  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...
Read more