£150m has recently been allocated to school sport and PE by the government. This funding is to be handed over to schools in order to provide extra coaching sessions to up-skill school staff.

This brand new scheme is set to provide:

• £9,250 per year to primary schools with 250 pupils.
• Tougher Ofsted inspections to ensure the money has been well spent.
• More specialist PE teachers via teacher training.
• Help for linking schools to local coaches and clubs.

The government have been discussing these plans for months after an obvious desire for increased sporting activity had arisen throughout the education sector. It follows reports from Ofsted after a 4 year long investigation, which states that school sport is not at the standard it should be.

Much criticism was pointed towards the government in 2010 after £162m worth of funding was abolished. Schools will be pleased at the new funding opportunity so here’s hoping the government don’t change their minds again.

ESP and the improvement of school sport.

ESP fully support the idea of up-skilling staff and, alongside providing a wide range of playground equipment and markings, we also provide CPD training to school staff in order to improve the teaching of school sport. Our multi-skills concept has been proven to increase the abilities of children across a number of sporting activities. Our training programs provide the appropriate coaching to support this. More information can be found on our page on CPD training.