"World leading" PE lessons for local schools

Wednesday 15 January 2020

As the importance of physical activity becomes more of a focus in our society, the Sports Commission is working with local teachers to improve the standard of school PE lessons.

Currently, primary school teachers in Guernsey deliver most sessions from the sidelines, with little involvement.

However, the organisation's looking to change that as part of its recently announced five year action plan for sport in Guernsey. It's aiming towards a future model of co-delivery and active teacher involvement in lessons.

The Committee for Education, Sport and Culture first agreed to financially support a primary school sport initiative two years ago. Since then, the Commission has upped its PE team, with members regularly visiting schools to deliver lessons. But, with its last year of States funding, it is going for a different approach.

Pictured: Graham Chester (image from Sports Commission action plan).

"It's slightly different to what we were doing before in that we're aiming to up-skill the teachers to help them feel comfortable with the delivery of PE, rather than us purely going in and delivering PE," explained Operations Director, Graham Chester. "It's a two-way thing."

At the moment, the initiative is only running in primary schools but the Commission does have plans to extend that into secondary education.

"One of the things that the new school model is looking at is electives and we're trying to get as many sports as we possibly can into a position whereby they are able to support the electives programme," Mr Chester continued. "We currently could say that about eight or nine sports would be fit for purpose to support that programme, but we want to get that up to 30, so that means there's quite a lot of work for us to be doing to support them.

Pictured: The Guernsey Sports Commission.

"We think that, with 30 sports on board, we would be able to offer a really good programme for students. That's quite a significant chunk of work!"

The Commission believes Guernsey has the chance to provide a "world leading" experience of physical activity, PE and sport for young people.

 The proposals have been laid out in the Commission's action plan, which will be debated by the States as part of the Sports Strategy next month.