Since 2013, the government has been spending over £150 million a year to improve the provision of Physical Education (PE) in Primary Schools. Schools must spend the additional funding on improving their provision of PE and sport and have the freedom to choose how they do this.

At Willow Lane we teach to the heart and key to this is getting all children to enjoy the benefits and camaraderie of sport. In order to establish this sporting culture on top of our PE curriculum we run a wide variety of after-school clubs and enter numerous inter-school sports competitions.

We use the funding to:

• Join a Sports partnership –Lancaster and Heysham SSN – which offers training, competitions and coaching opportunities.
• Improve the quality of the school PE provision through teachers and support staff attending training and delivering PE focused staff training.
• Employ internal coaches to run clubs for children of all ages including gymnastics, cricket and tag-rugby.
• Employ specialist coaches to run clubs including football, multi-skills and dance.
• Purchase exciting, safe and sport specific resources to facilitate the teaching of PE.
• Provide opportunities for children to compete. We feel it is important that children have the chance to represent their school and take part in competitive sport against other schools.
• Cover transport costs for children to attend competitions and experience sporting opportunities at specific venues eg Tower Wood Outdoor Centre.

We are proud of how much our children enjoy sport and how well they do. External coaches – including Morecambe Football Club, dance teachers, Lune Road Tennis Club and competition organisers – regularly feedback on their positive attitude. This has led to success over recent years in inter-school events including Gymnastics, Swimming and Girls’ Football.

In order to make long term and sustainable improvements to the sporting provision at our school, teachers work alongside external coaches to develop their own PE teaching. Furthermore, we spend an amount of money on resources – such as a running track around the field – which will provide for children for many years to come.

Swimming and Water Safety

In year 4 our children go swimming.

In line with the National Curriculum (2013), all schools must provide swimming instruction either in key stage 1 or key stage 2.

In particular, 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 safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

Swimming classes in school are part of the National Curriculum and all children are expected to attend these sessions. School will require evidence of a medical condition if children are not to participate for medical reasons.

Children will need to have the following equipment for their swimming session;

• Swimming costume or trunks
• Swimming Cap
• Towel

As with school uniform, children that do not come with the correct equipment may be given a school swimming kit to ensure that they take part.