“Our school prides itself on inclusion for all pupils across all sports. A partnership with First Step PE, helped provide multiple opportunities for our children, with them thoroughly enjoying all sessions.”
June Brown, PE Lead
The School
Kingsway Primary School have been an excellent partner of First Step PE for over 7 years now. To hold a relationship for this long, it takes communication and reliability to ensure that as a school they are satisfied with our PE delivery each year. Kingsway have always been a school that support a strong sports delivery, with plenty of activities available for the children to get involved in.
These consist of activities for both boys and girls in 11 a side football, netball, tag rugby, rounders, and sports hall athletics. Given the extensive range of sports that the school already delivered, it was important that First Step PE provided the same level of quality when coming in to help deliver sports to their children.
The Challenge
Kingsway Primary School needed to give their teachers PPA cover so that they could complete some other school duties such as lesson planning. Therefore, whilst teachers had time away from their pupils, they required an organisation they could rely on to come in and safely deliver PE to a high standard. Fortunately, this is something that First Step PE has experience with across numerous schools.
One concern of the school was that they found PE helped grow relationships between pupils and teachers, which would make for stronger academic learning in subjects such as Maths and English. By bringing in an external partner to help with delivery, they were worried this may hinder classroom learning by taking away the teacher’s chance to bond with their students during PE. All being considered, First Step PE was prepared to help Kingsway with anything they possibly could and rise to the challenge.
The Solution
To begin, First Step PE assisted the school by delivering one hour of PE per week. Having been increasingly satisfied with the results, and the ease of bringing our coaches in whenever was convenient, Kingsway have since increased their PE delivery to three days a week. They now have delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
This allowed for more teachers to take breaks for planning, preparation and assessments, which is essential for all teachers to keep lesson quality at their highest possible level. Even when issues have arisen, First Step PE have been praised for resolving matters promptly and dealing with any requests as swiftly as possible.
The Result
Overall, the children and staff at Kingsway Primary have been extremely pleased with their PE delivery. The variety of different activities the school have to choose from keeps lessons fun and interesting for pupils, with the pupil voice having the freedom to express which sports they want to take part in. First Step PE have accommodated to all requests, meaning they have a varied learning experience.
We also help deliver afterschool clubs such as football, gymnastics, tennis and footgolf. Attendance levels for these have been outstanding, and the children love taking part!
