PE

PE Curriculum

Our PE policy throughout the school is to encourage children to enjoy all aspects of PE, whether it is competitive or creative, individual or team based. This helps them to play or participate in sports throughout their lives, which has many benefits both to their health as well as socially.

All pupils receive at least 2 hours per week of quality PE provision as part of the curriculum and experience competitive and non-competitive sport internally, playing many matches within lessons and sport events.

Each half-term, children learn at least two different sports, focussing on teamwork, resilience and skill. Our dedicated PE coaches, Mr Nunes and Mr Welch, deliver these lessons. All Year 4 children go to swimming lessons at Aldwickbury School for the whole year. 

Click here for the overview of the PE curriculum. 

Extra-Curricular Sport

We enter competitions through the School Games Programme and the Harpenden District Sports Association (HDSA). The competitions are broken down into three categories:

• Compete - Competitions for the engaged and active students and aimed at the strongest players.
• Aspire and Develop - Learning and developing new skills through participation in festivals, friendly competitions and personal challenges
• Inspire and Engage - Participation and fun with a focus on trying new activities and skills.
• We also have B and C teams in Year 6 where we look to give everyone who comes to the trials an opportunity to represent the school.

The majority of the competitions we enter are only available to Year 6 and we aim to by the end of Year 6 give every child that wants to represent the school an opportunity. There are a few competitions for Year 4 but not many. We remind children that there are multiple opportunities in Year 6 and not to be disappointed if they are not selected before Year 6.

Selection for team events is based on but not limited to:

• Level of skill demonstrated
• Level of fitness
• Understanding of games, tactics and rules
• Emotional maturity to cope with the pressure
• Performance, effort and behaviour in lessons and practices
• Commitment to training and learning
• Attitude of player on and off the field of play
• How the player presents themselves, manners, helpfulness, sportsmanship, etc.
• Performance of the player as a team member
• Enthusiasm to learn and improve
• Understanding of the importance of safety

For individual competition selection, for example: cross country, athletics, and indoor athletics, the pupils attend training and trials. The pupils with the best results/times represent the school as long as they also fulfil the criteria stated previously for “team” selection.

Role of parents

We would like to thank parents in advance for supporting us as follows:-

• If your child is regularly chosen for a team, please help them to understand it is a privilege to represent the school and they should be proud of themselves.
• If your child is not chosen, encourage them to keep coming to practices and enjoy what they do with the club; they are still part of the success of their teammates.

Parents and spectators have a great influence on the children’s enjoyment and success in sport. Children play sports first and foremost because they love playing. The Grove Junior School is dedicated to nurturing that enjoyment and enthusiasm for sport and as a foundation for developing skills and tactics for life.

We believe that taking part in a club contributes to each child’s personal development and self-esteem. This is more important than winning matches. All our teams play to “win” but not at any cost, it is important to play in the right spirit and in a supportive atmosphere.

In order to achieve this result, we rely heavily on the parents and supporters who attend matches to behave in an appropriate manner and to support all the children in the right way.

The Team Selection Policy has been devised in consultation with Hertfordshire County Council’s PE consultant.