Sports Premium

What is the Sports Premium?

The Government is providing funding of £150 million per annum to provide new, substantial primary school sport funding’. This funding is being jointly provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport, and will see money going directly to primary school headteachers to spend on improving the quality of sport and PE for all their children.

The sport funding can only be spent on sport and PE provision in schools.

Purpose of funding

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

Possible uses for the funding include:

•   hiring specialist PE teachers or qualified sports coaches to work alongside primary teachers when teaching PE

•   new or additional Change4Life sport clubs

•   paying for professional development opportunities in PE/sport

•   providing cover to release primary teachers for professional development in PE/sport

•   running sport competitions, or increasing participation in the school games

•   buying quality assured professional development modules or materials for PE/sport

•   providing places for pupils on after school sport clubs and holiday clubs.

How will we be spending the Sports Funding and who will benefit?

The Governors agree that the money must be used so that: all children benefit regardless of sporting ability; that the most able children are given the opportunity to compete in advanced tournaments; that staff have access to training opportunities and continued professional development.

Here is how we spent the funding each year:

Examples of a strategy are:

•   new or additional Change4Life sport clubs

We will be purchasing a range of equipment and activity packs for lunchtime staff to use to run Change4life at 1pm each lunchtime for all age groups. In addition we’ll be partnering with Bedford High School to train Y5 & 6 pupils as Playleaders to run Change4life with the infant pupils at lunchtime.

•   paying for professional development opportunities in PE/sport

In the Autumn Term for KS2 and the Spring term for KS1, dance specialist Jennifer Hatton will work with staff to deliver training. With each teacher she will be running a series of model lessons on how to teach dance and in addition will plan two cross curricular units of worked linked to the Year group topics.

•   running sport competitions, or increasing participation in the school games

We will be working with ATSA and Sainsbury’s Games at Lowton High School to offer pupils the opportunity to take part in a wide range of sporting competitions and provide transport to Manchester level festivals. In addition we will continue to provide in school house based sports competitions at lunchtime.

•   buying quality assured professional development modules or materials for PE/sport

At KS2 we will be providing Sports units taught by Rees Sports and an after school multi sports club aimed at increasing the number of pupils who engage in sporting activities and after school football to improve the skills of older pupils.

Gold Award

The Sainsbury's School Games Kitemark is a Government led awards scheme launched in 2012 to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community.

St Stephen’s C of E Primary School achieved the Sainsbury's Gold School Games Mark in January 2018.