About the PE and sport premium

Schools have a central role to play in supporting all children and young people to live healthy active lives. This is particularly true of primary school where the foundations of positive and enjoyable participation in regular physical activity should be established.

Crucial to achieving this is ensuring that pupils have access to at least 30 minutes of physical activity during the school day, alongside high-quality PE provision taught by confident and knowledgeable teachers and opportunities to experience and participate in a wide range of sports and physical activities. PE and sport premium grant funding should be used by schools towards these aims.

How to use the PE and sport premium

Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of the PE, sport and physical activity they provide.

This means that you must use the PE and sport premium to:

• build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now are sustainable and will benefit pupils joining the school in future years
• develop or add to the PE, sport and physical activity that your school provides

Sustainable improvement

Making sustainable improvements should be considered as a priority. This is often achieved through developing and investing in the knowledge and skills of the teaching staff and other school staff who may have involvement in supporting a lasting change to the school’s approach to physical activity, curriculum PE or provision of school sport.

Key indicators

You should use the PE and sport premium to secure improvements in the following 5 key indicators:

1. Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport
2. Engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity
3. The profile of PE and sport is raised across the school as a tool for whole school improvement
4. Broader experience of a range of sports and physical activities offered to all pupils
5. Increased participation in competitive sport

Examples of how these may be achieved include:

• providing staff with professional development, mentoring, appropriate training and resources to help them teach PE and sport more effectively to all pupils and embed physical activity across your school
• embedding physical activity into the school day through encouraging active travel to and from school, active break times and holding active lessons and teaching
• providing targeted activities or support to involve and encourage the least active children
• raising attainment in primary school swimming to meet requirements of the national curriculum before the end of key stage 2 - every child should leave primary school able to swim

Active mile

Active miles can be an effective way to make regular physical activity part of the school day. If schools choose to take part in an active mile, you should use existing playgrounds, fields, halls and sports facilities.

It is not appropriate to use PE and sport premium funding to fund the cost of a specially constructed course.

Raising attainment in primary school swimming

Swimming and water safety are national curriculum requirements and essential life skills. The national curriculum requirement is that by the end of key stage 2, pupils should be taught to:

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• use a range of strokes effectively, for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke
• perform a safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

You can use the PE and sport premium to fund the professional development and training that is available to schools to train staff to support high-quality swimming and water safety lessons for their pupils.

You can also use the PE and sport premium to provide additional top-up swimming lessons to pupils who have not been able to meet the national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety - after the delivery of core swimming and water safety lessons.