At Parson Street Primary School, we recognise the importance of Physical Education to a child’s physical, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as the role it can play in a child’s spiritual, moral and cultural development. PE develops the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. PE promotes an understanding in children of their bodies in action. It involves thinking, selecting and applying skills and promotes attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle. Thus enabling them to make informed choices about physical activity throughout their lives and become a well-rounded member of their community. 

We aim to provide a broad and balanced P.E. curriculum to aid children’s increasing self-confidence to manage themselves and their bodies within a variety of movement situations. A balance of individual, team, cooperative and competitive activities aim to cater for individual pupil’s needs and abilities. In addition to the importance placed on P.E. lessons, we also promote our wider curriculum offer which includes the opportunities for pupils to take part in extra-curricular sports, activity clubs and competitions. We are part of Ashton School Sports Partnership who organise our competition calendar. 

Daily physical activity and health enhancing activities also play a crucial role in our offer to pupils. This includes: active lessons, active break and lunchtimes and extra-curricular activities. 

We are extremely fortunate to have our own indoor swimming pool. In Y1 and Y3/4, in line with statutory expectations, all our children attend swimming and water-safety lessons with the aim that all of our children can: 

Perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations 

• 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.