Our intention at North Downs primary school is to deliver a high quality, inclusive physical education curriculum that is creative, exciting, positive and fun, inspiring all children to live healthy and active lives. Skills and knowledge are carefully sequenced and built on to ensure children develop to be ‘the best they can be’. We encourage the children to try different sports and activities and embed values such as fairness, respect, consideration, honesty and teamwork. Children are able to extend their knowledge, skills and fitness by attending our wide-ranging and varied clubs, competitions and festivals. They have fun and experience sporting success. North Downs children leave school with a love and enjoyment of physical activity that we hope will continue throughout their lives.

When taking part in physical education, school sport and physical activity we always try to demonstrate our school values:

Aims

• To acquire and develop skills in a wide range of activities.
• To select and apply skills tactics and compositional ideas.
• To show knowledge and understanding of fitness and health.
• To evaluate and improve performance.
• To be proud of their achievements.
• To promote fair play and respect.
• To promote an understanding of safe practice, and develop a sense of responsibility towards their own and others’ safety and well-being.

To achieve our intention PE looks like this:

• Children are active for 90 to 95% of PE lessons
• High quality equipment is used to engage and create positive attitudes.
• Individuals know what they are learning and how they can enjoy and be successful.
• Children have time to discuss and evaluate their learning.

At North Downs all classes have at least 2 hours of timetabled Physical Education (PE) each week. In addition to this teachers are expected to take active breaks during the school day, these may be a run or active blasts. Children from year 1-6 take part in our extensive Forest Schools programme which particularly targets children in need of emotional and social support.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum follows the EYFS guidance. They plan activities such as multi skills and dance to develop a range of gross and fine motor skills.

Years 1-6 follow the units in the long term plan of dance, gymnastics, games, athletics and swimming. In year 3-6 the games activities rotate on a 2-year programme to offer a wide variety of sporting experiences and ensure a progression of skills.

Swimming is a key focus of our PE curriculum in years 3-6. We consider it is absolutely fundamental to teach all our children to be competent swimmers and be able to save lives. We have our own pool and ensure our swimming goes above and beyond the national curriculum requirements.

Opportunities for Physical Education Outside the Curriculum:

Our out of hours learning programme enriches and extends the work of the curriculum to develop the children’s skills and keep them active.

There are a wide variety of sports clubs for the children to join at lunchtime and after school. These clubs are open to all children and are very well attended.

• Provide a balance of competitive and non-competitive activities through intra and inter school events.
• Ensure the school participates in the extensive programme of Dorking School Sports Partnership and Active Surrey sporting fixtures and festivals
• North Downs also links to numerous local sports clubs with coaches supporting some of our after school clubs.

For further information regarding our PE and Sports curriculum please contact Mrs Stowell, our Subject Lead, by emailing info@northdowns.surrey.sch.uk