At Fremington Primary School, we believe that physical education, experienced in a safe and supportive environment, is vital and integral in its contribution to our children’s physical, emotional and social development and mental health and wellbeing. The aim of our physical education curriculum is to increase the children’s self-confidence through an ability to manage themselves successfully in a variety of situations. This area of the curriculum is also central to the ethos and values held by FPS, as it allows our children to demonstrate their friendship skills, perseverance to achieve and self-confidence to be their best through a range of different sports and activities, helping to develop their sense of self, growth mindset and creativity. Our PE links closely with our PSHE and science curriculums and teaches our children about healthy, active life choices and the impacts that physical activity has upon us.

Our PE curriculum aims to:

• To acknowledge the importance of early developmental skills, of fine and gross motor skills, agility, balance and co-ordination, which are the foundations needed for all other learning areas.
• To provide opportunities for vigorous exercise and the development of core physical skills.
• To foster an appreciation of physical exercise and movement activities to increase wellbeing and participation.
• To develop the skills and knowledge needed to achieve success, including problem solving, tactical awareness and character building.
• To create challenging and engaging activities, that are inclusive and appropriate for each child’s individual needs and abilities.
• To foster an enjoyment and promote positive attitudes towards an active and healthy lifestyle, fitness and health.
• To develop increased confidence and competence in a wide range of activities.
• To develop an ability to adapt and apply knowledge, practical skills and concepts in a variety of movement-based activities.
• To promote effective and positive co-operation.
• To teach our pupils to plan and evaluate their own and each other’s actions and performance.
• To provide our children with the opportunity to try new activities, develop new skills and grow in confidence.
• To embed values such as fairness and respect for all.
• To instil a sense of fair play, so that they can appreciate competition in a moral way and accept winning or losing in a gracious manner whilst giving 100%.
•  To actively teach our children to use technical vocabulary, empowering them to communicate effectively as part of a team.
• To ensure that equal opportunities are given to all children.
• Due to our coastal locality, we aspire to ensure that all our children can confidently and competently swim a minimum of 25 metres by the time they leave FPS. Our on-site pool means we offer yearly swimming lessons for our children to ensure they have not only the confidence to keep themselves safe in the water, but the ability to enjoy swimming and water sports.

We follow a clear and comprehensive scheme of work, which ensure that the requirements of the national curriculum and the EYFS early learning goals are fully met through a progressive programme of work. Each year group will practice developmentally appropriate skills through a wide range of sporting activities including; invasion games, net & wall games, striking and fielding games, gymnastics, dance and swimming. Pupils at FPS will participate in two hours of high-quality physical activity per week, through which they cover two units of learning each half term, this may be skills based or a sporting discipline. For EYFS this will be achieved through both PE lessons and the use of outdoor provision.

Through our effective PE teaching, we provide learning opportunities that enable ALL children to make progress. Children are set suitable, challenging but achievable learning and we respond to children’s differing individual needs. We achieve this through implementing a range of strategies, including adapting our lessons or tasks to support and extend the abilities of the child, providing different equipment to suit the needs of the individual, whilst still enabling them to develop the required skill and deploying staff to assist those who may require further support.

At FPS our overall objectives within our PE lessons are to develop the children’s physical skill, cognitive thinking, social skills, communication skills and to foster a respect for all. These objectives will help to support our children to grow into well-rounded future citizens.

It is our hope that through following our progressive PE curriculum, children will achieve their age-appropriate expected skills and knowledge in Physical Education and will be equipped to utilise these skills and knowledge into everyday activities and other sporting ventures. We intend for our children to have fostered a love of sport and physical activity, so that our children at FPS will engage in extra-curricular sporting opportunities provided by us at school and local clubs and agencies. We will have built the understanding that physical activity has a highly positive impact on mental health and well-being, ensuring our children are able to support their own mental health through activity.

It is our intention therefore, that our children will leave FPS as well-rounded individuals, physically, socially and mentally and having reached at least their expected levels in PE. We hope that the children will understand the importance of physical activity, sport and PE and aspire to ensure that they are confident, resilient and disciplined, so that they can become independent and responsible for their own health and fitness throughout their lives.

Through ensuring that all children are confident and competent enough to swim the minimum distance of 25m and have a deep understanding of water safety, will enable our children to enjoy and appreciate our coastal locality in the safest way possible.

The below attachment includes our PE progression statements across the school and our PE long term plan.