At least 60 minutes of sport or physical exercise per day, with a recommendation of 30 minutes of this delivered during the school day – that’s it easy we can spend the sports premium on coaches to come in to deliver the curriculum and the teachers can have their planning, preparation and Assessment (PPA) time. Wrong! The guidance outlines that this should come out of your core staffing budgets. Schools also cannot use this funding to teach the minimum requirements of the national curriculum or to fund capital expenditure.

What’s left that we can do with the funds?

Plenty – train your teachers, primary teachers typically do not specialise in Physical Education, provide them with the training from specialist coaches. This is much more than just an INSET personal development day. Schools are employing PE School Sports Specialists Teachers to work alongside and influence other teachers within schools. 

Building the skill set of support staff will also mean that where breaks and lunches are run by support staff supervisors they too can be active, with use of a range of equipment. 

Since March, the educational sector saw the highest demand for holiday clubs with key worker parents still not able to make use of their pre-COVID childcare arrangements of grandparents or childminders. COVID or no COVID do you run holiday clubs? The 6 week summer holiday is a long period for parents to cover with annual leave, having sports coaches and specialist to provide these clubs mean that children can access physical activities even in the holidays. After School clubs run by these professionals are also in high demand now with both sets of parents working a 9 -5 day.

Are you building an all school culture to physical education? ‘that’s difficult in the current climate’ is often what we hear back. Why though – we are in a digital age. We receive hundreds of emails daily, some of which are questionnaires . Why not have the year 6 lead on the development of a questionnaire that gets sent out to all pupils within school asking them what sports they would like to experience, Boccia, New age Kurling, Archery, sitting volleyball (not heard of some of these, nor had we but the pupils in one particular school had) then have them be involved in the planning. Give more responsibiliites to your pupils, create sports embassadors (trained by the Physical Education Teacher that you employed to train the staff) they can assist in planning, organising and leading activities. What about the year group bubbles?! Have the pupils that are leading the activity record it and then play it through the whiteboard/screen to the class they are teaching – ask the pupils how they could do it without physically being in the same room, the have gown up on ipads and with technology they will find a way.

Organise a virtual family fun health day, which involves parents joining in on a virtual physical training session with their children, or advising them of a local nature trail they could use and smoothy making tutorial. Every family receive a pack of information on active learning, and healthy eating websites they can access at home and local sports clubs the pupils could join. Don’t have the time to arrange or supply this, outsource it using the funding. 

It isn’t known year to year if the funding will be available again the next academic year – investing in your own staff and pupils will ensure that even if you have to withdraw the specialist support, your school has trained staff and a culture of an active all school approach.

Pupil Premium Grant (PPG) – what’s the tiered approach?

First of all it’s a guide and is not prescriptive. The idea of a tiered approach is to help focus on a small number strategies that are likely to make the biggest difference according to the education endowment foundation.

Its broken down into the following tiers;

Teaching

Improving teaching through professional development, training and support to ensure an effective teacher is in front of every class.

Targeted academic support

Having classroom teachers and teaching assistants provide targeted academic support (one-to-one or small groups) as evidence shows the positive impact of targeted support.

Wider strategies

These relate to the non-academic barriers such as attendance, behaviour and social and emotional support. 

The tiered approach is not new, all of these areas have been included in many schools and academies PPG expenditure, what it does assist with is the ability to evidence the PPG expenditure within defined areas and against a longer term PPG strategic plan. Tracking the professional development, training and support as NQTs progress through the school enables a robust and continuously developing personal development plan. It can also be used for all staff including the support staff who are also expected to carry out the one-to-one and group interventions. 

Making the PPG spend part of wider strategies allows schools to close many gaps in achievement and by providing high quality teaching that is effective for disadvantaged learners means schools are providing effective teaching for all.

Get in touch with EPI if you need any further support or information hello@edupi.org.uk