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At Friern Barnet School, we want every child to enjoy coming to their PE lessons and taking part in an active, healthy, interesting learning environment.
We aim to give our students knowledge of a wide variety of sports so that when they are older and have left school, they feel physically educated enough to carry on doing some form of physical activity: whether that be in a local gym, a football team, a netball club, a gymnastics club, trampolining club, basketball club, athletics club, cricket team or in fact, any type of physical activity which will benefit their fitness and health.
At Key Stage 3, all students follow a broad and balanced curriculum, with 2 PE lessons every week. Units of work last for 4 or 5 weeks. In Year 7, PE lessons are taught in their form groups to provide opportunities for the students to learn how to work as a team and start to build social bonds. In Year 8, students are then mixed into three equal ability groups. In year 9, students are mixed and split into 4 groups according to their PE capability. We have found that this delay in setting by ability encourages more lower ability students, who may feel demoralised by being placed in a lower set, more time to develop a love for physical activity and to take part in the many extracurricular opportunities on offer.
The Key Stage 3 curriculum is closely linked to the practical element of the GCSE in Physical Education (30% practical, 10% coursework based on a Fitness unit of work). The theory content is partially covered in Key Stage 3 PE lessons but in Key Stage 3, we believe PE should remain a practical activity and not be burdened unduly with worksheets and time spent away from taking part in physical activity. For many of our students, their PE lesson is the only form of exercise they get in their week. With the growing concern of declining physical activity levels for young people and childhood obesity increasing in our country, we feel that as much of each PE lesson must be spent on children actively participating in physical activity.
The sports that are usually assessed in GCSE PE are football, netball, basketball, trampolining, table tennis and badminton. These sports are all covered in our Key Stage 3 curriculum where students will learn the basic skills and tactics required for the GCSE. We have introduced a new Key Stage 3 unit of work for Fitness in Years 7, 8 and 9 which we have closely aligned to the GCSE specification, including fitness components, methods of training and fitness tests. These lessons are all taught at Key Stage 3 in a practical way but with the theory explained as we undertake the activities. By the end of Key Stage 3, all students will have experienced, at least once, all of the fitness tests that are studied in the GCSE specification, learnt about components of fitness and be familiar with some different training methods.
Please email Mr Soave at p.soave@friern.barnet.sch.uk if you have any questions regarding Physical Education.
