5th March 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Education inspectors believe that there is not enough strenuous or physical activity in school PE lessons. According to the Ofsted report on primary and secondary PE, teachers were seen to talk too much in lessons and lacked specialist training. The report also points out the fact that very few schools play competitive sport at was is considered to be a high level.
Mostly, the report revealed two-thirds of the 120 primary schools that were inspected had good or outstanding PE teaching and three-quarters of the 110 secondary schools. This improvement on the results from the 2008 survey was attributed to the School Sports Partnership programme, which was scrapped by Michael Gove then partially restored, but with a hugely reduced budget following an outburst of complaint from concerned parties.
Ofsted warned that in order to sustain this level of improvement following the London 2012 Olympic Games, a new national strategy needs to be put in place. Without the Schools Sports Partnership, certain schools were being criticised for their lack of specialist and high quality PE teaching. According to Baroness Sue Campbell, chairman of the Youth Sport’s trust, this is due to the fact that ‘primary school teachers are not receiving adequate training’.
Although there were positives in that most schools are providing at least 2 hours of PE a week for their pupils and only a fifth of primary schools do not guarantee that all pupils can swim before they leave, concerns came from the content and nature of the lessons. All children need to be provided with the opportunity to become and remain fit and healthy and the draft PE curriculum is designed to provide this.