Please take your time to read through this section as it details information about the sports premium can and cant dos!
The PE and Sport Premium is a funding initiative provided by the UK government to primary schools in England. Its purpose is to enhance the quality of physical education (PE) and sport offered to pupils. Here are some key points about the PE and Sport Premium:
1. Funding Allocation: Schools receive funding based on the number of pupils in years 1 to 6. The amount varies, but typically, schools with 17 or more eligible pupils receive £16,000 plus £10 per pupil, while those with fewer than 17 pupils receive a flat rate of £1,000 per pupil.
2. Objectives: The primary objectives of the PE and Sport Premium are to:
– Increase the engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity – Every child in your school can attend at CSP event at least 3 times.
– Raise the profile of PE and sport across the school as a tool for whole school improvement – Newsletters and current information being provided by the CSP
– Increase the confidence, knowledge, and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport – X3 PLT meetings a year and extra CPD offered throughout the year.
– Offer a broader experience of a range of sports and activities to all pupils – introducing each year new events and using the sports facilities in the local community.
– Increase participation in competitive sport – Every child in your school can attend at CSP event at least 3 times.
3. Usage: Schools have the flexibility to decide how best to use the funding to meet these objectives. Common uses include hiring specialist PE teachers or qualified sports coaches to work with teachers, providing staff with professional development opportunities, introducing new sports or activities, and purchasing new equipment.
4. Accountability: Schools must publish details of how they spend their PE and Sport Premium funding on their websites. This includes the amount received, a breakdown of spending, the impact on pupils’ PE and sport participation and attainment, and how the improvements will be sustainable in the long term.
5. Impact: The funding aims to create a sustainable improvement in the quality of PE and sport provision, leading to healthier lifestyles and improved physical well-being among primary school children.
The PE and Sport Premium is part of the broader effort to ensure that young people develop healthy habits early in life, understand the importance of physical activity, and have opportunities to engage in various sports and physical activities.
PE and sport premium for primary schools – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Please see guidance below from Abbie from PH Sports presented at the PLT Meeting on 13.9.2024:
https://benchmarkyourpesspa.scoreapp.com
Attached is also the new template for Sport Premium, slides from the webinar, pupil voice survey, details about further support and the links below:
PE and Sport Premium Update Webinar: https://www.afpe.org.uk/page/ImportantPrimaryPEandsportpremiumUpdate2023-2024
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PE and sport premium for primary schools – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
How to use the PE and sport premium
Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of the PE, sport and physical activity they provide.
This means that you must use the PE and sport premium to:
- build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now are sustainable and will benefit pupils joining the school in future years
- develop or add to the PE, sport and physical activity that your school provides
Sustainable improvement
Making sustainable improvements should be considered as a priority. This is often achieved through developing and investing in the knowledge and skills of the teaching staff and other school staff who may have involvement in supporting a lasting change to the school’s approach to physical activity, curriculum PE or provision of school sport.
Key indicators
You should use the PE and sport premium to secure improvements in the following 5 key indicators:
- Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport
- Engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity
- The profile of PE and sport is raised across the school as a tool for whole school improvement
- Broader experience of a range of sports and physical activities offered to all pupils
- Increased participation in competitive sport
Examples of how these may be achieved include:
- providing staff with professional development, mentoring, appropriate training and resources to help them teach PE and sport more effectively to all pupils and embed physical activity across your school
- embedding physical activity into the school day through encouraging active travel to and from school, active break times and holding active lessons and teaching
- providing targeted activities or support to involve and encourage the least active children
- raising attainment in primary school swimming to meet requirements of the national curriculum before the end of key stage 2 – every child should leave primary school able to swim
Active mile
Active miles can be an effective way to make regular physical activity part of the school day. If schools choose to take part in an active mile, you should use existing playgrounds, fields, halls and sports facilities.
It is not appropriate to use PE and sport premium funding to fund the cost of a specially constructed course.
Raising attainment in primary school swimming
Swimming and water safety are national curriculum requirements and essential life skills. The national curriculum requirement is that by the end of key stage 2, pupils should be taught to:
- swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
- use a range of strokes effectively, for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke
- perform a safe self-rescue in different water-based situations
You can use the PE and sport premium to fund the professional development and training that is available to schools to train staff to support high-quality swimming and water safety lessons for their pupils.
You can also use the PE and sport premium to provide additional top-up swimming lessons to pupils who have not been able to meet the national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety – after the delivery of core swimming and water safety lessons.
What your funding should not be used for
You should not use your funding to:
- fund capital expenditure
- employ coaches or specialist teachers to cover planning preparation and assessment (PPA) arrangements – this should be funded from your core staffing budgets
- teach the minimum requirements of the national curriculum (or, in the case of academies and free schools, to teach your existing PE curriculum) – apart from top-up swimming lessons after pupils’ completion of core lessons
Capital expenditure
Where schools have an existing capitalisation policy, you should use this policy to determine whether proposed spending would be considered to be capital expenditure.
If a school does not have a capitalisation policy it remains for them to determine what qualifies as capital, but you might wish to use the following resources:
- local-authority-maintained schools: consistent financial reporting framework: capital expenditure
- academies: capital expenditure is defined in the academies handbook as: “capital assets or funding are those from which an entity expects to derive benefit for more than one year: typically land, buildings, vehicles and information technology. They are usually called fixed assets.”
Small purchases should not be capitalised. Your school or trust should determine an appropriate (de minimis) value, below which transactions should be charged to revenue.
Accountability
You are accountable for how you use the PE and sport premium funding allocated to you. The funding must be spent for the purpose it was provided – to make additional and sustainable improvements to the PE, sport and physical activity offered.
As part of their role, governors and academy trustees should monitor:
- how the funding is being spent
- how it fits into school improvement plans
- the impact it is having on pupils
Schools and local authorities must follow the terms set out in the conditions of grant. If a local authority or a school fails to comply with these terms, the Secretary of State may require the repayment of the whole or any part of the premium paid to the local authority or school.
Online reporting
You must publish details of how you spend your PE and sport premium funding by 31 July at the latest.
Online reporting must clearly show:
- the amount of PE and sport premium received
- a full breakdown of how it has been spent or will be spent before of the end of the academic year
- the impact the school has seen on pupils’ PE, physical activity, and sport participation and attainment
- how the improvements will be sustainable in the future
You must also publish the percentage of pupils within your year 6 cohort in the 2022 to 2023 academic year who met the national curriculum requirement to:
- swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
- use a range of strokes effectively, for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke
- perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations
Attainment data for year 6 pupils should be provided from their most recent swimming lessons. This may be data from years 3, 4, 5 or 6, depending on the swimming programme at your school. It is essential to retain attainment data from swimming lessons in years 3 to 5 to be able to report this accurately in year 6.
To help you plan, monitor and report on the impact of your spending, partners in the physical education and school sport sector have developed a template. The template can be accessed through the Association for PE and Youth Sport Trust websites. It is recommended that the template is used to record your activity throughout the year, in readiness of publication at the end of the school year.
Review of online reports
School online reporting will be monitored by DfE. We will look at a selection of schools’ online reports to confirm that use of the PE and sport premium described in the report meets the requirements outlined within this guidance and the conditions of grant document.
Where concerns or discrepancies are identified the department will make contact with the school to address and investigate these fully. In the event that any concerns are confirmed, appropriate and proportionate action will be taken against the school, which may include action to recover funding from the school.
Further guidance
You can get further guidance at:
- Association for PE – advice on the PE premium
- Youth Sport Trust – primary PE and sport premium
- Sport England for advice on using the PE and sport premium effectively see the
- Swim England for advice and resources on primary school swimming and water safety
- DfE teacher blog for best practice examples of how schools are using their premium effectively
- National Governance Association (NGA) guidance on use of the PE and sport premium and how governing boards can influence and support the planning and delivery of PE as well as physical activity and sport and monitor the impact
- Active Partnerships can provide further advice on how best to use your PE and sport premium