Intent

All pupils at The Downley School are immersed in a carefully crafted PE curriculum. We believe that quality PE curriculum gives our children the knowledge, skills, and strategies to be active, fit and healthy members of society. We believe the PE curriculum provides broad and rich learning opportunities which enable our students to become positive young athletes whatever their ability. We believe our PE curriculum promotes the attributes needed in physical activity and sport such as teamwork, communication, sportsmanship, and encouragement. We feel our curriculum is inclusive and accessible for all students.

Our PE curriculum enables pupils to learn, grow and succeed together and is underpinned by our six values:

Respect

Our PE curriculum provides a space where students learn how to display respect for themselves, pushing them to achieve their goals in PE to gain that sense of pride and develop self-respect. The PE curriculum also allows students to learn to respect their opposition during games, and allows students to respect each other, recognising that everyone has different abilities in PE and acknowledging that learning in PE can happen at different paces. Children learn how to manage conflict, build upon skills and use their own strengths to strategise. Students will also develop respect for their team through the responsibility of the individual role that comes from being a part of one.

Resilience

Our PE curriculum aims to help children develop their resilience, through challenging warm-ups, ball skills, and games scenarios, students need to be problem solvers and develop their resilience when faced with a challenging situation during PE. Our curriculum aims to provide students with the appropriate skills to develop their PE skills over time, with also developing their growth mindset to be ambitious and set a PE goal to achieve over a period. Pupils are encouraged to learn from their mistakes and use appropriate resilience strategies to achieve their goal. In PE they will feel a sense of ambition, success, pride and even disappointment. It’s about making sure that the students have the right tools to manage these feelings.

Teamwork

Teamwork is an ever-present thread woven through our PE curriculum. Students are often placed in teams and groups ranging from smaller teams to larger teams. TDS students are tested as team members in PE lessons, forced to showcase and demonstrate effective teamwork strategies to work together towards a collective goal. We feel our PE curriculum promotes teamwork constantly as students are provided with ample opportunities to work in teams during PE lessons. TDS students are taught skills and attributes as to how to be an effective team member.

Inclusion

Our PE curriculum provides a fair an equal opportunity for every student. The ‘Power of PE’ means that our students are provided with fun and engaging lessons which cater for every level of ability. Our curriculum is easily adapted to cater for all needs and numbers. Our equipment has been purposely bought and allocated for all year groups, allowing juniors and early years to have different sized equipment more suitable for their age and heights.

Responsibility

Our curriculum provides opportunities for students to show responsibility. Firstly, the students are responsible in making sure during PE that they are keeping themselves and others safe. That they are making responsible choices when learning new concepts and making sure that they are responsible for our PE equipment, keeping it in good condition for the next student to use.

Integrity

Our PE curriculum promotes our value of integrity. Students are held accountable by playing by the rules of games and holding each other accountable to be a good sportsperson. At TDS, we promote honesty and respect for ourselves and our opposition during team games. We feel our curriculum allows our students the freedom to show that they can be responsible for equipment and use the equipment provided appropriately.

Implementation

Our high-quality PE curriculum has clear progression and learning is carefully sequenced, built on and revisited. Lessons are planned to deepen pupils’ knowledge and skills, for future learning and employment as an athlete.

We do this by:

• Having a whole school scheme of work approach to PE.
• Having our school values underpin our learning in PE.
• Encourage a positive environment for all pupils to flourish with physical activity.
• Exploring opportunities to develop cross-curriculum learning, e.g., maths with time trials, statistics. Science, exploring the body and physics in relation to movement and flight.
• Having high-quality PE equipment and resources.
• Promoting pupils' voice within PE.
• Promoting a broad PE curriculum and working with the Premier Sports to promote after-school sports clubs.
• Having sporting opportunities outside of school, e.g., school football & netball teams.
• Sports days throughout the year to showcase skills and promote fun and equal opportunities within PE.

Impact

Pupils leave The Downley School with a deep understanding of the academic content of the PE curriculum. They know more, remember more and can do more; they are prepared for their future aspirations as a young athlete.

They understand that when we learn together, we grow together and succeed together.