What is the Sports Premium?

The government is providing funding of £150 million per annum for the academic years 2013/2014, 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 to provide new and substantial primary school sport funding. The funding is being jointly provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport, and will see money going directly to primary school Headteachers to spend on improving the quality of sport and PE for all their children. Each school will receive £8,000 plus an extra £5 per pupil each year for the next two years – at Ripple Primary School that will mean around £11,500 in each of the three years. This money can only be spent on sport and PE provision in schools.

Purpose of the funding

All schools have to spend the sport funding on improving their provision of PE and sport, but there is freedom to choose how we do it. At Ripple Primary School we recognise the contribution of PE to the health and well-being of the children. In addition, we believe that an innovative and varied PE curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities have a positive influence on the concentration, attitude and academic achievement of all children.

Uses of the funding include:

• Employing one qualified sports coach to work alongside primary teachers when teaching PE to increase their professional knowledge, skills and confidence when teaching sport.
• Greater exposure to a wide range of sporting activities whilst raising participation
• Ensuring that every child in the school undertakes a minimum of two sessions of PE per week.
• Ensuring that every child has an equal opportunity to take part in PE and Sport in a manner to suit their ability.
• Buying quality assured professional development modules or material for PE/Sport.
• Increasing the provision of places and clubs for pupils outside school hours.
• Ensuring that all children are paid for by the school to have swimming lessons and to have intense sessions for all non-swimmers in the summer term.
• Increasing the professional development opportunities in PE/sport for all our teachers which might include providing cover to release primary teachers for professional development in PE/sport.
• Increasing access and participation in sport competitions and in the school games, particularly within Barking and Dagenham’s Cluster group of local schools.
• Opportunities for inter school sporting competitions on House and Sports Days numbers.
• Providing new or additional Sport clubs.

At Ripple Primary School the governors agree that the money must be used so that all children benefit regardless of their sporting ability. We use our Sports Funding allocation to continue to place a very high priority on our PE provision.

The school employ a PE specialist coach who runs extra sessions, after school and holiday clubs and assists with special sporting events such as Health and Fitness Week and Sports Days.

Our Sport coach also works with small groups of children to support physical development and also to boost confidence and friendships.

Our staff work together to give the children a secure set of sporting skills. At the same time, we strive to inspire the children by inviting professional sportsmen and women to school. They share their passion for sport and inspire the pupils.

Ripple Primary strives for success and have been developing our sports teams who have done very well in inter-school and inter-borough sports competitions. Just have a look at our trophy cabinet. Extracurricular enrichment activities, subsidised by Sports Funding, have contributed to the school achieved local, regional and national success and recognition, e.g. cricket and football teams playing in competitive finals at Lords and at Anfield (not bad for a school with no grass or pitches).

We have supported sport, not just for pupils but also for parents in providing agility and fitness equipment in some play grounds to use in the morning. This not only improves fitness levels but ensures that parents are given the opportunity to participate and set an example for our pupils.

Ripple Primary School supports the strong school sport partnership infrastructure in Barking and Dagenham and we recognise this as key to the high participation levels in the school games competitions and festivals and CPD provision, as well as leadership and volunteering opportunities

The school is always looking for opportunities to develop sport and fitness and we have spent significantly more than the Government grant to ensure our children benefit from the best provision.

Impact of School Sports Funding

The Sports Funding Allocation has been used to develop healthy lifestyle choices and the physical wellbeing of all pupils. On-going teacher assessments, session observations and monitoring procedures are in place to gauge pupil progress and the impact that Sports Funding is having across our whole school. On the basis of this, in 2014-2015, the teaching of PE across the school was evaluated to be good. This included the excellent additional targeted group work that the Sports Coach undertook through the year with SEMH children and pupils at risk of being obese in adulthood. This judgement was also externally validated by Ofsted in May 2016. Through the further development of our middle leadership in PE, the appointment of a new Sports Coach, the procuring of a PE new scheme of work for the school and further CPD for all staff we aim to take the quality of teaching and learning in PE to outstanding during 2016-2017.

The most recent Ofsted report Ofsted Inspection (May 2016) notes that:

The school’s Sports Funding Champion (Roger Mitchell) and Link Governor (Jade Brindley) monitor the impact of the school’s Sports Premium spending on a termly basis. At these meetings, the school’s termly assessment data is used to monitor the in year progress for Sports Premium children as compared to the full cohort.

The next full review of the Sports Funding will be undertaken by the school in November 2017.