At Applebee Wood Community Specialist School, we believe PE and Sport plays an important role in developing our children, with the potential to change young people’s lives for the better. We have welcomed the Government’s announcement confirming that schools in England will benefit from £320 million from the PE and Sport Premium during the academic year 2022-23. This is designed to help children get an active start in life, supporting primary schools to improve the quality of their PE and sport provision so that pupils experience the benefits of regular exercise – from becoming healthier both mentally and physically to improved behaviour and better academic achievement.

The confirmation of the investment into primary schools for PE, sport, activity and play has never been more needed given the potential disruption to children’s activity levels during lockdown. Research from Sport England, shows that the number of children meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines has dropped from almost 47% to 19%. Over a third of children say they’ve had less chance to be active because schools are shut. This welcomed investment will play an important part in getting children active - which is important not just for their physical health but because being active builds mental resilience and helps children achieve academically.

At Applebee Wood, we are committed to using this resource in developing high quality PE lessons, alongside greater opportunities for sporting competitions and clubs for all children.

How we are using it at Applebee Wood Community Specialist School

Our commitment to providing children with high quality competition access was recognised with a Gold School Games Mark after external validation at the end of summer 2019.

Applebee Wood is a Healthy School which is committed to delivering high quality and consistently good PE provision to all our children which enables our children to improve their health, fitness, welfare and wellbeing, their understanding of sport, teamwork and citizenship. We promote an inclusive ethos where all pupils enjoy participating in sport; empowering them to become the best they can be. One of the many ways we have used the sports funding at Applebee Wood has been to update our resources for physical education lessons.  Ensuring that the equipment is accessible for all children in the school means that they are able to develop their skills in each area of the curriculum. 

Applebee Wood continues to be a leading part of Lancashire Special Schools Sports Partnership (LSSSP) which provides advice and opportunities for pupils to participate in inter-school sports competitions. This funding has enabled us to enter our children into a wide range of sporting competitions throughout the year.

We will continue to broaden the level of activity within the school through sport clubs and the Daily Mile, which will have a long-lasting impact on the health and fitness of every child in the school.  Swimming lessons for every child in Primary will continue with the clear impact of raising attainment in swimming to meet requirements of the National Curriculum before the end of Key Stage 2. We will continue to ensure our children have access to different sporting opportunities including competitions and festivals. To promote the importance of a healthy active lifestyle children will take part in many inter school sport events including sports fancy dress, tournaments, sports days, sports relief days and sports challenges.

At our school we have developed a plan to ensure this funding is invested to maximise the long term impact of our PE provision for pupils and staff. The impact of these initiatives is monitored through assessment of children’s skills, staff and pupil feedback, uptake of clubs etc.

The following factors are taken into account:

Sustainability: to build capacity and capability within our school to ensure improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years, we will extend the resources available within PE lessons and the confidence of class teachers and support staff to ensure that learning within PE and games is consistently improving and that improvements are sustainable. We will continue to broaden the level of activity within the school through our new weekly running club, Funky Fridays and the Daily Mile which will have long lasting impact on the health and fitness of every child in the school. Additionally, cheerleading continues to deliver active learning, active blasts, thus sustaining wellbeing. 

Our connection with LSSSP will continue to develop teacher understanding of fully inclusive PE lessons and through shared resources this connection is beneficial long term. To read more information about sustainability, please click on our Impact reports below.

Please click the below links to see how we used the funding in the past and what we plan to do during 2022-23.