PE & Sports Premium Funding

How to use the PE and sport premium

Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of the physical education (PE), physical activity and sport they provide.

This means that you should use the PE and sport premium to:

develop or add to the PE, physical activity and sport that your school provides
build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years

You should use the PE and sport premium to secure improvements in the following 5 key indicators.

Engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity, for example by:

providing targeted activities or support to involve and encourage the least active children
encouraging active play during break times and lunchtimes
establishing, extending or funding attendance of school sport clubs and activities and holiday clubs, or broadening the variety offered
adopting an active mile initiative
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

Profile of PE and sport is raised across the school as a tool for whole-school improvement, for example by:

actively encourage pupils to take on leadership or volunteer roles that support the delivery of sport and physical activity within the school (such as ‘sport leader’ or peer-mentoring schemes)
embedding physical activity into the school day through encouraging active travel to and from school, active break times and holding active lessons and teaching

Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport, for example by:

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
hiring qualified sports coaches and PE specialists to work alongside teachers to enhance or extend current opportunities offered to pupils

Broader experience of a range of sports and activities offered to all pupils, for example by:

introducing a new range of sports and physical activities (such as dance, yoga or fitness sessions) to encourage more pupils to take up sport and physical activities
partnering with other schools to run sports and physical activities and clubs
providing more and broadening the variety of extra-curricular activities after school in the 3 to 6pm window, delivered by the school or other local sports organisations

Increased participation in competitive sport, for example by:

increasing and actively encouraging pupils’ participation in the School Games
organising, coordinating or entering more sport competitions or tournaments within the school or across the local area, including those run by sporting organisations

These good practice examples produced by Active Derbyshire and Active Notts and the 7 top tips for spending the Primary PE and sport premium, found on the Association for PE and Youth Sport Trust websites, give further suggestions for how your PE and sport premium might be used to deliver on the 5 key indicators.

Your local Active Partnership can provide further advice on how best to use your PE and sport premium. Active Partnerships coordinate the local availability of PE, school sport and physical activity, and can help you find the right sport opportunities and facilities. Where appropriate, you could also ask your local School Games Organiser for advice.

The Association for PE has produced a PE and sport premium FAQ which may also be helpful in deciding how you wish to use your funding.

Active mile

If schools choose to take part in an active mile, they should use existing playgrounds, fields, halls and sports facilities to incorporate an active mile into the school day and develop a lifelong habit of daily physical activity.

Raising attainment in primary school swimming

Swimming is a national curriculum requirement. The 3 requirements for swimming and water safety are 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 3 national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety - after the delivery of core swimming and water safety lessons.

You are required to publish information on the percentage of pupils in year 6 who met each of the 3 national curriculum requirements. Further details are in the online reporting section of this guidance.

Further information on training and resources, including advice on the use of the PE and sport premium, is available from Swim England.

What your funding should not be used for

You should not use your funding to:

employ coaches or specialist teachers to cover planning preparation and assessment (PPA) arrangements – these should come out of your core staffing budgets
teach the minimum requirements of the national curriculum – apart from top-up swimming lessons after pupils’ completion of core lessons (or, in the case of academies and free schools, to teach your existing PE curriculum)
fund capital expenditure – DfE does not set the capitalisation policy for each school – school business managers, school accountants and their auditors are best placed to advise on a school’s agreed capitalisation policy

Accountability

School compliance

You are accountable for how you use of the PE and sport premium funding allocated to you. You are expected to spend the grant for the purpose it was provided – to make additional and sustainable improvements to the PE, sport and physical activity offered. Schools and local authorities must follow the terms and conditions in the conditions of grant documents.

Online reporting

You must publish details of how you spend your PE and sport premium funding by the end of the summer term or by 31 July 2021 at the latest. If you have any carried forward funding from academic year 2019 to 2020 you should show separately how this funding has been spent and confirm that it has been spent before 31 March 2021.

Online reporting must include:

the amount of PE and sport premium received
a full breakdown of how it has been spent
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 are also required to publish the percentage of pupils within your year 6 cohort in the 2020 to 2021 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, as well as for publication at the end of the school year.