Schools and Teachers

The PE and School Sport national and county pictures

In October 2002, the Department for Education and Skills with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport launched the National PE, School Sports and Club Links Strategy (PESSCL). The strategy’s aim is to deliver the Government target for 75% of 5-16year olds within school sports partnership schools to access two hours of high quality PE and school sport each week within and beyond the curriculum by 2006. Encouraged by the evidence that this target would be met, it was increased to 85% by 2008.

A key part of the PESSCL strategy, was to establish networks of schools with fully funded infrastructures to develop effective PE delivery in schools and sporting pathways in club settings. In Gloucestershire, every young person in every school belongs to a partnership, through which PE and school sport can be developed, increased, and improved, and through which we can begin to see improvements in attainment, attendance, behaviour, and most importantly the health of young people.

The model adopted in the County is shown below:

A PDM – Partnership Development Manager at a specialist sports college is at the centre of the partnership, surrounded by secondary schools in which are SSCOs, School Sports Coordinators. Every secondary family includes a number of primary schools each with a PLT, Primary Link Teacher, developing PE in that school.

School Sports Coordinator Diagram

In the County we have 5 school sports partnerships hosted as below:

Cheltenham & North Tewkesbury - St. Benedict’s Sports College
Gloucester & South Tewkesbury - Bishops College
Cotswold - Cirencester Kingshill Sports College
Forest of Dean - Heywood Sports College
Stroud -Thomas Keble Sports College

We know we are achieving success in these partnerships: as at June 2006, the County are exceeding the government PSA target for participation in 2 hours of high quality PE each week by 8%. These school sports partnerships are proving to be invaluable in achieving the targets set. With an emphasis on high quality provision, a programme of funded professional development in PE was introduced to give teachers the opportunity to refresh and extend their skills and to enable them to be confident that they can deliver high quality experiences to young people.

Physical activity is one of the four core themes of the Healthy Schools Programme, and the criteria recognises the requirements to acknowledge and deliver on the elements of the PESSCL strategy set out above.

For information regarding sport and physical activity in the County contact :
Angela James, Sport & Physical Activity Coordinator, or Liz Dunning on 01242 425572, or log on to our website at www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/pess