Can primary schools successfully deliver more physical activities?

Spare time – that’s a foreign concept in the life of a modern primary school staff team!

In fact, there are already NOT enough hours in the day and pressure to embark on new initiatives can be highly unwelcome.

However, according to the Youth Sports Trust 2022 report on ‘PE and School Sport in England’ there is a need to “raise public awareness of a decline in physical activity levels and the status and provision of PE and sport in some schools, and why it is so important to tackle this.”

Fortunately, when it comes to getting pupils more active, fit and engaged with sports, there is invaluable help available for local authorities and individual schools. Help that can both expand physical activity provision and engage more children, with a wider range of abilities and interest levels.

That’s because The Little Foxes club is currently firming up its offer of support staff for PE lessons, and its easy-to-operate Saturday activity projects for schools.

Physical Activities
Primary Schools Physical Activities

Why this outsourced support is so vital

The benefits of under-11-year-olds taking part in physical activities are very well documented. Including better learning outcomes in the classroom. This is why there is so much pressure on schools to expand and improve both PE lessons and extracurricular sports sessions.

Research suggests that many primary schools already take this obligation seriously, with 97% actively encouraging physical activity within the school day. The problem comes when you start to measure the take-up levels, and whether the children who MOST need this help, are in fact the LEAST engaged!

Also, back to the horrendous time constraints faced by schools, how can you possibly fit in multiple extra sports offerings, to make your activity provision diverse and inclusive?

Benefits of agency staff for PE

Forming a partnership with a temp agency for school staff that specialises in PE support personnel is a great way to meet your ‘goals’. Especially if you find PE support staff with a variety of specialisms, so you can vary the types of sports you offer in lessons.

There are also budgetary advantages to outsourcing PE lesson help of course. Plus, it can be challenging to find staff willing to only do a few hours each week in the sports hall or on the playing fields!

Using a niche provider of sports support staff for schools enables you to cover staff absence and illness safely too.

Pe Support

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Find the best term-time activity that includes football

Weekend School Sports

Staffing weekend school sports

Beyond the timetabled PE lessons, how can primary schools get involved in local inter-school sports initiatives, and offer Saturday sports activities for pupils, without help?

This is especially true for schools with a higher proportion of low-income families in their community, and students who struggle to engage with social and leisure provision outside school hours. Perhaps you also have students with special needs too, and find it hard to make your extracurricular sports inclusive and welcoming with different ability levels?

Ticking all the right boxes means bringing in highly experienced community coaches under The Little Foxes Club’s ‘umbrella’. They have a superb track record for delivering safe, highly equitable sports activities for schools on Saturdays.

(Though of course Little Foxes can provide top-level coaching for your school’s high-performing sports stars too!)

More hours in the day – and more bodies

Clearly, outsourcing both curriculum and extracurricular physical activity to The Little Foxes Club will go some way to freeing up time in schools. Staff can focus on juggling one of the other pressing priorities.

However, it’s also a way to get more PE support staff in place seamlessly and enables schools to get more involved with Saturday leagues, competitions and training sessions. This helps greatly in meeting national targets on physical activities for primary school children.

Especially as The Little Foxes Club offers proven ways to get mixed ability children involved in sports, and admin systems to efficiently manage out-of-school hours physical activities.

Why not explore this in more detail, with a no-obligation chat about using our help to top up and expand physical activity provision in your school or schools?

Curriculum And Extracurricular Physical Activity
Success Stories Victories Catholic Primary School

Our Success Stories

The success of the After-School Enrichment sessions over the years has led to a large number of students increasing their participation in sporting activity throughout the week, regularly attending our community based sessions.

Little Foxes Club

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Our Early Years & School Services are tailored to each school and the requirements of its pupils. Our experienced team has a proven track record of working in nurseries and schools, managing session planning and delivery, and progress reporting.