School Games Platinum Mark Application 2022:

Developing and Co-creating our Offer with Young People

For several years, pupils have been involved in enriching our PE and sports offer – both competitive and non-competitive – at Laureate.  This is an area where we believe that we can demonstrate exemplary practice.

Each year, our Sports Leaders take the formal UK PlayMaker Award. As part of this, they have to evidence planning and run sporting activities at playtimes and lunchtimes. In addition to this, they can earn bronze, silver and gold Laureate Leadership Awards that run alongside this training, by completing challenges including organising inter-house competitions, encouraging other pupils to get involved and helping staff to run co-curricular clubs.  (All of our pupil leadership opportunities – House Captains, School Councillors, Junior Road Safety Officers etc. – have equivalent criteria for bronze, silver and gold Laureate Leadership Awards.)

In previous years, Year 5 and Year 6 children have attended younger years’ clubs such as football, gymnastics and tri-golf where they have set up the equipment, coached and – in tri-golf – assisted our School Games Organiser running a station at the inter-schools competition.  Although this is an area which has been limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when clubs and competitions were either cancelled or restricted to ‘bubbles’ or virtual events, we have a well-established track record in this area and we are committed to growing these opportunities again.

Our Sports Leaders planned both of our Sports Days, for Early Years & Key Stage 1 and for Key Stage 2, selecting the events with minimal guidance from the PE Leader.  For the younger pupils’ Sport Day, 24 pupil leaders (including Sports Leaders, House Captains and others) ran all aspects of the afternoon, including setting up the stations, announcing, welcoming parents, leading warm ups, running stations, timekeeping, scoring and coaching (Sports Leaders ran the stations while House Captains and other young leaders ‘captained’ a team, encouraging them to maximise engagement and enjoyment). This meant that staff, including the PE Leader, were purely facilitators and the children had full ownership of the day. Following the event, we received positive comments from both staff and parents about the professional manner in which the children conducted themselves and how they encouraged the younger children to be the best they could be.  The Key Stage 2 Sports Day was also planned and prepared by our Sports Leaders, with our Senior Sports Leaders again assuming announcing duties, but the delivery was supported by Sports Leaders provided by our neighbouring secondary school via our SGO; several of these students had previously been Sports Leaders when they were pupils at Laureate, and it is always rewarding to see that they have continued to grow in confidence and apply what they started to learn with us.

Our House Captains and Sports Leaders have also organised inter-house competitions such as dodgeball and football, organising teams and fixtures as well as officiating. Sports Leaders and other pupil leaders regularly write articles for the school newsletter, Facebook page and website. It is not just Sports Leaders who organise competitions – this is also part of the House Captains’ Laureate Leadership Award criteria.  We have purchased equipment to enable them to run an even wider range of competitive and inclusive activities and challenges at lunchtimes, e.g. stopwatches and clipboards to run challenges on the playground markings. Sports Leaders are responsible for planning and delivering activities from start to finish, including getting out and setting up equipment, explaining the challenge or activity, officiating, preparing certificates and presenting them in the weekly celebration assemblies (Sports Leaders also help the Headteacher to give out other certificates in assembly, e.g. to pupils who have represented the school in a tournament) although they are supported by our two Play Leaders (members of staff on duty every lunchtime who provide structured physical play opportunities for pupils) as required.  Next year, our new PE Leader intends to work with both our Sports Leaders and Play Leaders to further improve and refine our lunchtime offer, focussing on fundamental movement skills which link to our PE curriculum.

Our three ‘top tips’ for any primary school looking to involve pupils in developing their offer are:

1. Ensure that all opportunities are available to all members of the school community, not just the most able sportspeople. Our only selection criteria for inter-school competitions are high standards of fair play and behaviour: our pupils and leaders can only represent the school if their teacher signs their planner to say that they have demonstrated Good or Excellent effort and behaviour in and out of class over the past month.
2. Celebrate leadership and show that this is an area where all can succeed. We do not just celebrate pupil leadership, but prioritise it – the display of pupil leaders is one of the largest in the school, in a central location, and was one of the main discussion points at both our most recent Ofsted inspection (we specifically asked the HMI to speak to a group of our young leaders) and a visit from our local MP (Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, who spoke at length to our young leaders about their roles and the impact that they have had).  Pupils who may have previously faced challenges at school, such as with self-regulation, often thrive as Sports Leaders, with a massive impact on their confidence and self-esteem evident by the time they reach the end of Key Stage 2.
3. Stand back and allow pupils to make decisions.  We let them run activities and learn from their experiences, including when things haven’t gone as well as they might have with more directive adult leadership (for example, it took several meetings for our Sports Leaders to agree on the events that pupils would complete at both of our Sports Days, with a little coaching required to get them to consider which events would be suitable for younger and/or older pupils, but the final selections were hugely successful and enjoyed by all).

Having achieved the School Games Gold Mark every year since 2014, we are proud of the opportunities that our pupils are given to develop as young leaders, and we are keen to continue to showcase this through the maintenance of the Platinum School Games Mark.

The Government provides funding for primary schools to spend on additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of physical education (PE), physical activity and sport they offer.

Further details of the funding Laureate Community Academy has received and the impact it has had can be viewed from the attachments section.