The Government have been providing Sports Premium funding since 2013/14. This funding is provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport and sees money coming directly into primary schools. Head teachers are to spend the money on improving the quality of sport and PE for all their children within their own setting.

From 2013/14 to 2016/17 schools with more than 17 eligible pupils received the sum of £8,000 plus a premium of £5 per pupil for each academic year. This has been doubled in previous years. We received £17,620 for 2022-23. Our Sports Premium for 2023-2024 will be updated in September 2023.

Purpose of Funding

Schools are to spend the funding on improving their provision of PE and school sport, but we have the freedom to choose how we do this.

The DfE expect all pupils leaving primary school to be physically literate and equipped with the knowledge, skills and motivation necessary for them to engage in a healthy lifestyle and lifelong participation in physical activity and sport. They would like to see... 

• The engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity – kick-starting healthy active lifestyles. Primary School pupils should undertake at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day, of which at least 30 minutes should be in school
• The profile of PE and sport being raised across the school as a tool for whole school improvement
• Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport
• Broader experience of a range of sports and activities offered to all pupils
• Increased participation in competitive sport

How did Grundisburgh Primary School spend the money for the 2022/23 academic year, totalling £17,620? How has it impacted upon pupils' PE, physical activity, and sport participation and attainment? 

• We trained our year 6 children as play leaders. This meant that they could deliver purposeful, physical activities to younger pupils over lunchtimes.
• We audited our in school provision and analysed those pupils whom were less engaged. We completed pupil perceptions and invested in new equipment to broaden the offer of sports provision.
• The PE Subject Lead ensured that they took part in a variety of webinars related to PE and School Sport throughout the academic year to continue upskilling themselves and their impact as a leader on School Sport and PE as well as regularly engaging with the School Games Team.
• Raising the status and profile of PE through whole school events such as the cycle / scoot to school week.
• We continued to work hard on raising the status of PE and sport in Grundisburgh Primary School and we received recognition from the School Games Team for our continued sporting participation throughout the year. We have our Gold School Games Award. We are aiming for the Platinum award next year because we have had the gold award for four years.
• Improving participation in extra-curricular sports (back to pre Covid levels)

Impact of the academic year 2022/23s expenditure?

• Standards of teaching have improved even further. Increased confidence of teachers to teach areas highlighted as needing enhancing eg. dance.
• New scheme of work embedded and allows for greater differentiation, clearer progression of skills, especially the fundamental movement skills.
• Greater participation in inter and intra school sports. More emphasis is put on the importance of this and achieving Personal Bests and we are actively participating in the different categories of develop and compete. We took part in a wide variety including football, cricket, cross-country and Quad Kids (Athletics).
• Improved fitness of our children; base line fitness tests show improvements made. Fitness levels have risen by about 40% given the same fitness test three years ago and continue to improve year on year. We continued to highlight the importance of this even when children were at home in Lockdown and put a big emphasis on activity levels.
• Children more active out of school also – Multi Skills Programme recorded 30 minutes daily exercise participated in outside of school. Children received Bronze, Silver and Gold awards for these and proved a great incentive.
• The health of our children and their participation in school sports (and indeed sports they attend outside of the school arena) continues to be monitored closely and gaps identified and closed, including monitored for vulnerable group attendance and sports pathways.
• A further member of staff trained in Forest Schools.

How does Grundisburgh Primary School plan to spend the funding for the Academic year 2023/24?

- The school will continue to focus on the professional development of staff. One of the key strands of the sports funding is to develop the skills of our school staff so that the quality of PE and sport that is delivered will continue to be excellent and further enhanced. This is an area which will be the most sustainable and have the biggest impact as a lasting legacy for the school. Teachers will attend courses to upskill in areas of need. Working in this way helps to develop teacher confidence and expertise and will ensure that Grundisburgh Primary School always delivers High Quality PE Teaching. Staff will be asked in the Autumn term what areas they feel they need additional training in. An area to develop from the staff audit in 2023 is confidence when teaching and differentiating gymnastics.

- We will continue to raise participation in school competitions and will sign up for as many competitions as feasible. We will ensure maximum participation to these so that all children who would like to take part have access to the competitions. We are liaising with Ali Furlong from the School Games Team regularly to ensure engagement. We enable all children to have the opportunity to represent their school during their school life. We have already signed up for Football, Cross Country and Tag Rugby.

- Further emphasis on fitness - There will be further emphasis on fitness. Fitness will be monitored by class teachers and improved throughout the year. All classes will be expected to continue to focus on fitness for 10 minutes a day at least, focusing on improving fitness and working towards 'Personal Bests' to motivate and encourage. 

- Enrichment opportunities - We will be looking to have an orienteering course installed in the grounds that can be used to enhance learning in different subjects across the school.  We have also heard that the School Games Team are looking to enhance orienteering in Suffolk and will be providing competitions that we will enter too.

- Enhance the use of ICT within PE lessons - Having introduced more Ipads to the school, look at further ways of using ICT in lessons to enhance learning so that children can progress further - look at how this can feed into assessment of PE.

- We are focusing on upskilling all of our teachers so that progress, momentum and enjoyment in PE can continue even when there is no longer Sports Premium money being received by the school. We are confident that as a school we value PE and the impact that it has on the child as a whole and this will therefore always remain an important priority for the school. Largely our sporting clubs are run by sustainable sources including skilled parents. 

- Encourage more children to walk, cycle and scoot to school (during a recent survey undertaken 54% said they had travelled to school by car). Investigate this further at various times during the year eg. is this a genuine daily statistic or was this an anomaly due to the weather? Continue to take part in initiatives such as Walk to School week.

How are we helping children to develop a healthy, active lifestyle?

This year we will be aiming to gain Gold Healthy Schools status and take part in the Active Lives Survey as part of this. We have achieved 'Food for Life' Silver which has included making the dining hall experience better. We also work closely with our Catering provider to ensure balanced, healthy meals are provided with a wide variety of choice. We are now looking at enhancing our provision for cooking and growing even further and will be growing things to be used in the school kitchen.  We have bought additional cooking utensils to ensure termly cooking lessons are provided. 

We are also enhancing our Outdoor Learning provision and area and now have a day a week for cross-curricular learning for every class. We have one member of Forest Schools trained staff and will be training another this year.

How will these improvements be sustainable in the future?

At Grundisburgh we are careful to plan improvements that will be sustainable in the future, being mindful that the Sports Premium will undoubtedly not be ongoing forever. We ensure for example that where specialist teachers are employed, the staff are upskilled alongside these lessons so that this legacy would be able to continue, should the funding no longer be provided. We ensure that we use the Sports Premium for areas that make improvements, not just for our children now, but will be able to be utilised for years to come. This year for example we will be looking to implement more Outdoor Learning through introducing a cross-curricular Orienteering Trail. The School Games Team are also looking to introduce Orienteering Competitions so this will also have a lasting, sustainable impact. Further examples of how our improvements will be sustainable in the future are included within our detailed Sports Premium Action Plan below.

PE and Sports Premium Action Plan 2022-23 (updated July 2023)

Sports Club uptake monitoring