PE classes may be very different to those you remember

Physical Education is the part of the PEPASS acronym that people are most aware of. Think back to your childhood experiences of PE and depending on your age you may remember such traditional tropes as a PE teacher who resembles more of a drill sergeant than teacher, perhaps you remember trying to climb a rope or having a ball flung at your face as part of dodgeball. I remember my secondary PE playing football with us, not unlike the scene in Kes, where despite being in his sixties I never saw him lose possession in a game of football.

Things have moved on since then in the most part. Primary PE especially in my school has a much less competitive feel to it. Usually, children are working themselves or in small groups practising skills at their own level and in a fun and supportive environment.

READ MORE SECRET TEACHER

Sign up for our new The Secret Teacher newsletter

There is usually very high engagement and games that are played are popular and age appropriate. However, unfortunately this isn’t the experience across the country. I feel PE is one of the poorest taught areas of the curriculum in primary schools.

The reason for this is there is a huge lack of training available for teachers to deliver high quality PE. There is rarely whole school development in primary PE.

Primary PE specialists are like gold dust in schools. I know of people who completed a PGDE who did one afternoon of PE teaching in their entire PGDE. With such a lack of support, it’s very difficult for staff to deliver high quality PE. You don’t know what you don’t know. So the reality of this means many teachers, who have to deliver primary PE, revert to what they may have done in primary school. As I discussed earlier – this isn’t always positive.

Most student teachers and staff I speak to about PE think positively about it. They justify the purpose of PE as being good to improve their classes' fitness. Sometimes it’s justified as being a chance for the kids to escape the classroom and burn some energy off.

I agree with this – but I also think PE is so much more than that. Two examples I have of this, where I work we have a high number of children who arrive in our school with very limited English. For these children, PE is sometimes the first thing they can participate in with their classmates. This gives them huge confidence and helps the rest of the class see them as a classmate rather than the new person who hasn’t spoken to anyone yet. I can also think of a number of children through the years who perhaps had dyslexia or another additional support need who loved their two hours in PE as it was the only time of the week when they felt they were as good at or better than something than other children their age.

The solution to this seems simple – more training. More training at undergraduate or post graduate level. More support for class teachers to develop their knowledge and skills of what quality PE is.

The problem is, though, what I suggest would improve PE in the primary school is only a quick search and replace task on this document to work for modern languages. Or Science. Or Art, Music, Drama or any other number of curricular areas and government initiatives.

The problem with being a primary teacher is, no matter how much you want to be, you can’t be a specialist in everything. I think I’m quite passionate about PE in schools. Other staff in my school are passionate about other things. It’s what makes primary schools unique. A simple way to help this would be training and hiring more Primary PE specialists. With the current funding and jobs situation though, the chances of this happening are slim at best.