Inspiration Trust schools to benefit from £26,800 of Sport England funding to develop PE curriculum

Thetford Academy's Curriculum Leader for Health and Wellbeing has led a project to secure £26,800 of Sport England funding to develop the PE curriculum for all Inspiration Trust schools. The funding will be used to provide teaching teams with professional development, run wellbeing projects and develop new strategies to make sure every child at the Trust's family of schools can benefit from sport and physical activity.

Graeme Richardson, Thetford Academy's Curriculum Leader for Health and Wellbeing, said: "This is a fantastic amount of money to be invested in developing PE strategies. We're looking to freshen up the curriculum and 're-inspire' students. Part of the project to secure the grant involved research, which found that traditional PE sports are just not capturing the amount of interest we'd like. 

"We want to encourage activities that our students enjoy. It's important to establish a good relationship with physical activity that they can take forward into later life.

"We're going to introduce boxercise to the curriculum - using the funding to support the training of staff. This high intensity activity is based around boxing and is particularly popular with Year 10 girls - an age group that we have previously struggled to engage." 

Graeme Richardson shares more about the project

Why is this important? 

The aim is to position sport at the heart of each school. We need to make sure students are taking part in the recommended 30+ minutes of physical activity per day. I'm working closely with the Youth Sport Trust to give our students the greatest benefits from PE and sport, to do so we need to increase engagement. 

What other plans are there at this stage?

Each school within the Trust will run a project around mental wellbeing, for all age groups. Our teachers recognise that students being physically active improves academic performance. 

How might that look at Thetford Academy, specifically? 

Thetford Academy are going to focus on vulnerable students, driving to improve self esteem and build confidence. These were areas flagged as requiring improvement, and impact on personal development outside of sport. 

We're going to implement the plan by training Year 12 and 13 students to be mentors for younger year groups and promote decision making. We will be offering a wider range of choice in physical activity, and running wellbeing sessions - covering the mental aspects of sport and the importance of diet.  

We can expect to see the plans in action in the new year.