With most of the PE fraternity now suitably rested and either recently or getting ready to start a new academic year, we wanted to reach out and say:
- Welcome back and thank you in advance for your tireless pursuit of making PE stand for Positive Experiences for all children
- We have some exciting news to share
Before we share some of our recent developments and what you can expect from PE Scholar over the next 12 months or so, we thought it would be helpful to capture a few highlights of what has been going on in our landscape over the summer.
Landscape Update
Politics and Education
The battle for Prime Minister in England led to quite a few bold claims about PE and sport, including this one by Rishi Sunak on Ofsted’s role in increasing the accountability on schools to provide more sport and physical activity opportunities.
Did you see the Government response to the House of Lords National Plan for Sport, Health and Wellbeing published here in February 2022?
PE New Zealand has released some great free to access resources and orientation videos around their MoveWell initiative. Check it out here.
Sport
UEFA Women’s EURO – What amazing role models the Lionesses have been. As commented by Ian Wright on BBC Sport here, we hope you are ready for an increase in demand for girls football within curriculum and extra-curricular time. If you are based in England, make sure you are signed up and engaged with your local ‘The FA Girls’ Football School Partnerships‘ for help with this.
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games – again, so many amazing stories to share that it is hard to pick out highlights or personal favourites but make sure you use this momentum in assemblies, corridor displays and lesson discussions.
Health
Sport England will be releasing the next round of their ‘Active Lives‘ data reports this autumn. In the meantime, make sure you are utilising the local insight from the last set of surveys and perhaps now is a good time to capture a quick student voice on activity levels and engagement by your students over the summer. Perhaps you could make a tweak to this MS Form survey we have shared previously and get it out at the start of term?
We also need to be mindful of the fast approaching winter weather and whether that will cause more coronavirus related disruptions, what are you doing to look after your own health and wellbeing?
Physical Literacy
Sport England have commissioned an expert panel to support the creation of a consensus statement and further insight in this area. Liverpool John Moores University are leading on this work and we are excited to be involved. Find out more, to include the evidence review here.
Our Latest Developments
Meanwhile, we are proud to share a number of exciting new developments that will help us to help you in closing the research practice gap and helping physical education thrive.
Staffing – following the success of his ‘Is PE in Crisis?‘ book and the warmly received ‘Concept Curriculum 2.0‘, we are delighted to say that Lee Sullivan (Head of PE at Upton Court Grammar School in Slough) will be joining us one day a week to provide more expertise and capacity to support the network. He is available for conferences and consultancy but will also be working on some exciting new additions to the PE Scholar library. Simon Scarborough (Head of PE at Crispin School in Somerset) has also recently joined our team on an ad-hoc basis and brings a wealth of experience, not least in the area of inclusion and supporting trans and non-binary pupils in PE and we are excited to be able to share a course dedicated to this with you soon.
Two other colleagues that you need to know about and who keep our ship in order are Bonnie Jackson and Tash Verweij. Bonnie has been working with us since April and is our legal and policy lead, Bonnie helps us in ensuring that we, and our partnerships, are quality assured and compliant which helps us provide the best possible service to our network. Finally, we are really excited to have Tash Verweij join us in September as our events and engagement coordinator. We have some ambitious plans to provide more events and engagement opportunities to really help the profession access and transform their practice and PE offer.
Resources – we have recently added to our library of ‘Activity Prompt Cards’ and will continue to add to this collection over the next few months. These are ideal for trainee and Early Career Teachers to help familiarise themselves with new activity areas whilst these non participant lanyards are a must for every PE Department.
Courses – following the huge success of our PE Curriculum Design Programme we have now made this available to you anytime (rather than the previous cohort model) and that includes dedicated 121 time with Will Swaithes. Our Awesome PE in 5 wAys course continues to be popular but new additions to the line-up include AQA GCSE PE (created by the amazing Jackie Brookes), Physical Literacy and Preparing for a successful Ofsted Deep Dive in PE. An in detail course focused on Assessment in PE will be available very soon and so too will our British Rowing course with accompanying resources.
Research – we continue to pride ourselves on bringing you the latest research in the PE, sport, physical activity, wellbeing and physical literacy landscape. We do this to save you the time and energy of staying on top of the vast array of publications to help mobilise knowledge and close that research practice gap
Insight – our blog posts continue to receive big hits each week and we have plenty more book reviews and guest blogs in the pipeline for this year. If you have a story that you would like to share with a network of over 60,000, please do get in touch.
Events – our half termly Monday night Zooms have been well received and hence the programme will continue with a few exciting speakers already planned for this academic year. If you have a topic you would like discussed or would like to contribute then please get in touch with [email protected]. We also plan to trial some virtual and even in-person member meet ups on hot topics as well as hitting the road this year with lots of conference dates secured already – everything from local School Sport Partnership or Multi-Academy Trust days to a trip to Kuala Lumpur in January to support PE internationally. Please consider saving the date for 9th February for a PE conference in Oxford that we are running with Independent Coach Education.
Initial Teacher Education – we are incredibly proud to have led on a collaboration between 17 teacher educators across 12 different institutions who have created a ‘Preparing to become a Physical Education teacher’ course aimed at students commencing Initial Teacher Training (ITT). This is a pilot year for the materials with access granted for free to students across all the contributors institutions.
Publications – we are delighted to have been supporting Ben Holden to get his ‘Wanna Teach PE’ book ready and will be sharing a release date for this must read for anyone considering a career as a PE teacher very soon.
Membership – A massive thank you to our growing network of members, you are enabling us to build a sustainable and improved offer that will soon include a number of free to access bite-size courses, a dedicated app and social groups to collaborate even better. We are even exploring the idea of virtual and in-person meet ups to discuss the latest challenges, opportunities and ideas in the world of PE. If you are not yet a PE Scholar member, then please consider joining this great group of professionals now to benefit from a weekly newsletter to keep you up to speed, 1,000s of resources, extra insight, research and access to a growing library of courses. Currently priced at just £30 a year or £75 for a 3 year commitment, we also offer team memberships that have proven very popular. Find out more here.
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