Are you a sports coach looking to create a supportive environment for every pupil? The new Behaviour Management course from Aspire:ED is here to help you empower your coaching techniques and positively impact your pupils' lives.

As a coach, you understand the importance of creating an inclusive and supportive environment for all children. PE, school sports, and physical activity enhance physical and mental well-being and teach valuable life skills. However, children come from different backgrounds and possess varying behavioural challenges, which can pose a challenge for coaches in primary schools.

To help you navigate these challenges, we've compiled some top tips for behaviour management.

1. Reinforce positive behaviour even when you're not there: As a sports coach, it's essential to consistently reinforce positive behaviour, even when you're not physically present. We understand that periodic visits to primary schools can pose challenges in effectively managing behaviour....

For most people, professional development means building new skills, enhancing performance and unlocking opportunities. For teachers and coaches, it means all those things and more.  

Because when you’re boosting children’s physical and mental health, expanding your knowledge base doesn’t just benefit you. It gives pupils a better start in life.  

According to Sport England, physically literate children are more likely to be active for the long term – but more than half of children aged five to 15 in England aren’t doing the recommended daily amount of exercise. 

For many pupils, school provides the mainstay of their physical activity. It’s where they learn Fundamental Movement Skills – from balancing to throwing a ball – that blossom into sporting talents and vital life tools like teamwork and taking part. It’s also where they discover the power of play.  

As an educator, the wider your...

This week on the podcast we welcome United Learning’s Head of Sport Shaun Dowling. 

Who is Shaun Dowling?

Shaun is Head of Sport at United Learning, a national group of primary, secondary and all-through schools across the state and independent sectors. As Head of Sport, Shaun supports Heads of PE and Directors of Sport in further improving the quality of their PE curriculum, school sport programmes and physical activity provision; Shaun ensures they’re using the power of sport to assist young people with their wider educational development.

Shaun is a former Head of PE and Director of Specialism, having progressed to Deputy Headship in two specialist sports colleges. 

Having trained at the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, Shaun later gained his MA(Ed) from Southampton University. He achieved his NPQH before the opportunity arose to undertake a national role in the education team at the Youth Sport Trust (YST). 

Shaun’s extensive...

 The Primary PE Huddle is back for Series 3 with a whole new host of experts from across the sport and physical activity sector.

To kick off the series, we welcome Greg Dryer, co-founder and CEO of miMove.

Who is Greg Dryer?

Greg is the co-founder and CEO of miMove, the world’s first bespoke app enabling schools to help pupils make physical activity a normal and regular part of their lives. 

Prior to the creation of miMove, Greg was founder and director of the Centre for Physical Education, Sport and Activity at Kingston University (CPESA) after a long teaching career that afforded him the opportunity to work with all ages from pre-school through to post-grad. 

Greg is a highly experienced physical educator and critical thinker, having led PE departments in three London schools before moving into higher education. 

Greg’s work disrupts exclusive practices in PE and sport. Drawing inspiration from psychology, critical theory,...

There’s been an update to the PE and sport premium conditions.

 And we wanted to bring to your attention a particular detail:

Premium must be spent in full by the end of the 2021-2022 academic year.

That includes any underspend, so any premium that was rolled over as a result of the pandemic.

And you need to publish information about your spend on your school’s website by 31^st July 2022.

So, if you’ve got premium to use, here we’ve highlighted some programmes that directly meet the Department of Education’s 5 key indicators of suitable premium spend.

What are the 5 key indicators?

Before we jump into the programmes, we just wanted to refresh your memory of the 5 key indicators .

As you know, the PE and sport premium must be used to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of your school’s PE, physical activity and sport provision.

You should expect to see improvements across 5 key indicators:

• ...

Traditionally, CPD looks something like this:

You sign up to go on a course.

The day before the course, you spend hours putting together everything for a cover teacher.

On the morning of the course you travel to the specified location, do the course (sometimes broken up by some coffee and custard creams) and then you travel home.

Courses can be great. You get a day away from the hustle and bustle of the classroom, you might get a free pen, and theoretically, you come away with some new learning about a particular topic.

But what if the course you want to go on clashes with a parents’ evening?

What if the trainer you really want to meet works at the other end of the country?

What if, on the day of the course, you are tired and just not feeling it?

 Well, you might have to provide your own beverage and biscuit of choice, but in Aspire:ED we think we have the solution to all your CPD problems, and it’s so much more than just a one-day course.

Aspire:ED is an...

Continued Professional Development (CPD) makes several appearances in 7 top tips for spending the Primary PE and Sport Premium.

(Shout-out to the Association for Physical Education (afPE), Youth Sport Trust and Active Partnerships for putting this together.)

Why is CPD a sustainable use of the primary PE and sport premium?  

CPD directly relates to point three of DfE’s five key indicators of effective PE and sport premium spending. But, when you look at the other four, it’s clear that CPD can contribute to achieving all five. 

By increasing the confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport:

• more children can be engaged in regular physical activity
• the profile of PE and sport can be raised across the school as a tool for whole-school improvement
• broader experience of a range of sports and activities can be offered
• and increased participation in competitive sport can be achieved.

It all starts with...

In response to the market’s need to provide more accessible and flexible training opportunities for primary school teachers keen to enhance physical education provision, Aspire has launched Aspire:ED.

Aspire:ED delivers on-demand training through digital technology, making it possible for teachers to train anytime, anywhere and on any device

Paul Griffiths, Owner at Aspire and creator of Aspire:ED, explains: “Even before the pandemic, busy educators found it difficult to make time for professional development. Now, whilst schools focus on the maintenance of a safe environment during the global pandemic, this issue is compounded.

“Schools are reluctant to allow external training providers on site, many schools are battling low staffing levels whilst teachers isolate and the provision of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers has slipped down the priority list.

“Despite the challenges, the importance of CPD,...

Design your primary school’s physical curriculum with this easy-to-use process.

A process based around Ofsted’s new inspection framework which Crichton Casbon, internationally recognised expert in the physical curriculum, will take you through in the webinar:

The Importance of a Powerful Physical Curriculum

Thursday 26^th November at 4pm

Join Crichton and Dan Hays, Development Executive at Aspire, as they chat live about the effectiveness of a quality physical curriculum and give you the steps to achieve this at your primary school.

Save your seat here!

What you will learn:

• The steps of setting out intentions for your children – what you want children to learn and become as young people
• How to use the four tools available to you to implement your physical curriculum – Time, Place, People and Pedagogy
• How to measure and build on your impact with a simple 6-step process

Plus, all delegates that sign up and join us for...

School is many children’s only chance to be active.

And being in the midst of a pandemic in which restrictions abound, this is ever more pressing.

Lockdown number one saw a drastic drop in children’s activity levels, with only 19% meeting the recommended 1 hour of physical activity per day.

Since returning to school in September, children have been 47% more physically active. 

As we write this, however, we’ve entered lockdown number two spanning November and edging into December.

Lockdown two has one significant difference though, schools are to remain open. But, with sports clubs closing and time outside limited, the pressure on schools to keep children’s activity levels up weighs heavy.

To support schools, the Association for Physical Education (afPE), Active Partnerships and Youth Sport Trust have put together 'Covid-19 and school funding: 7 top tips for spending the Primary PE and Sport Premium'. Used effectively, this funding has the potential...