The Nature of PE

Physical Education plays an integral role within the balanced curriculum offered at Parkdale and it develops pupils’ physical competence and confidence. Through exercise we aim to promote physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle. We hope the enjoyment of exercise and the acquisition of skills will enable the children to continue physical activities into adulthood. We recognise that sport and academic achievement can go hand hand, and the benefits of sport and fitness, are key to physical and mental wellbeing.  We are passionate about inclusion in Sport, as we are across our curriculum. Equal access to sport is a key aspect of our PE provision. We are an Active School and encourage you to read how we are developing physical literacy and incorporating active learning into our non-PE lessons on the Active School page of our website. 

Parkdale offers a range of activities, including extra-curricular clubs, for all abilities ranging from Ultimate Frisbee and Hockey to Netball and Athletics. Children are taught the values of determination, respect, courage, teamwork, fairness, pride, resilience, equality and excellence.

We very much encourage positive attitudes towards participation in sport and within school, healthy competition is actively promoted and there are lots of opportunities for children to represent the school with pride in matches, tournaments, festivals and competitions. This year we have reinvigorated PE with Inter-House Competitions, This has boosted the profile of competition and selection for teams has been a matter of pride and celebration. 

The PE Curriculum

PE/Games lessons provide continuity and a progression of skills including; Acquiring and Developing Skills, Selecting and Applying skills, Tactics and Compositional Ideas, Evaluating and Improving Performance and Knowledge/ Understanding of Fitness and Health.

Children in both Key stages will do 2 hours of PE each week. Swimming is provided by Elite Swimming and all children in Years 4 and 3, and where necessary Year 5, are supported to access our visiting School Pool, to ensure that all children make the best possible progress in this essential life skill and achieve the goals of the School Swimming and Water Safety Charter.  Over the last two years our curriculum has significantly evolved. We have been working with our children and teachers to ensure that children are developing the skills and knowledge to access and play competitive games in PE, as well as developing core agility, balance and physical fitness. We decided to focus on key sports that would enable more children to participate and, by focusing on specific sports and progressing our skills, allow us to focus on games and competitions by upper KS2. We hope that this will enable more children to find the sport for them and to ignite a life-long love of sport.  Each term we focus upon two key sports, one hour each a week. We will also incorporate a fitness/agility activity ongoing throughout each term, this ensures all children develop these key physical skills and that fitness remains a priority. The sports for Autumn are Tag Rugby and Netball, with Circuit training as our fitness ‘thread’. Spring sees a focus on Table Tennis and Tennis, with Dance and Movement, and finally Summer will see us learn Cricket and Athletics, and develop Gymnastic skills and strength. We remain committed to football and continuing the success of our teams, offering football clubs, team training and break and lunchtime football. 

Each term we will hold Tournaments and House competitions, in either of the focus sports, including every child. These competitions are in addition to the various Transform and Gedling competitions that we enter. 

Sainsbury’s School Games Mark

The Sainsbury’s School Games Mark 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. Schools in England are able to assess themselves across bronze, silver and gold levels of the Mark.

We were awarded the Silver Award for 2014/15. We are absolutely delighted to have been awarded the Gold Award for 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/2019. This is recognition of our commitment, engagement and delivery of competitive school sport. It’s a tough set of criteria to meet and only a small percentage of schools are awarded Gold. After two years of COVID disruption, we were pleased to be awarded Gold again for 2021-22.