At Thaxted Primary School, PE is taught with the aim that all pupils leave school physically literate with the understanding, knowledge, skills and motivation necessary to equip them for a healthy active lifestyle and lifelong participation in physical activity and sports.

We do this by

• delivering a broad and varied range of sports and activities that offer a clear progression of skills to enable all abilities to participate and engage fully.
• Ensuring all pupils receive two hours of PE lessons per week split into two separate sessions.

We teach the skills set out in the National Curriculum through the activities of gymnastics, dance, games (covering sports such as tag rugby, netball, handball), athletics and for KS2 only, swimming.

We employ a specialist qualified sports coach to deliver the games skills of our curriculum in Autumn and Spring term. He uses the sports of netball, football, tag rugby, basketball and hockey to develop these skills. In Summer term he teaches running, throwing and jumping skills through athletics, and striking and hitting skills through the sports of rounders and Kwik cricket.

Class teachers are responsible for teaching gymnastics and dance skills throughout the year and will teach these in half termly modules once a week. These areas will each be covered twice in a school year.

Swimming lessons are provided for all KS2 children at the local leisure centre, and are taught by qualified swimming teachers . Year 3 children will receive 1 term of swimming lessons, whilst years 4, 5 and 6 will receive half a term of lessons. The key objective of teaching swimming through Primary School PE lessons is to ensure all children can swim the minimum of 25m by the time they finish in year 6. However as with all curriculum areas, once the children have achieved this objective, the teachers will ensure that the children’s swimming skills continue to progress.

Teachers ensure our P.E. session are accessible for all by using adult support, differing equipment, peer support and adapted by outcome to ensure children are challenged at the appropriate level. Children who demonstrate a higher level of ability in our P.E lessons also have to opportunity to compete in school teams against other schools to develop their skills further.

Throughout the year we also offer additional sporting opportunites such as our annual Sports day, participation in sports festivals at different schools, new sport taster sessions and trips to Harlow Outdoor Centre where the children can challenge themselves with less familiar activities.