Wrapping up the 2023/24 academic year

Boom, what a year

How are we at the end of another school year again? We all know how important it is to find time to recharge and switch off for wellbeing and future productivity/ resilience but how many of us struggle to do it? Consequently, we will be giving you a break from weekly newsletters, resource and research publications and insight (blog) posts until the middle of August when we all start firing our brains up for the new term. However, we will continue to publish PE Insights podcasts throughout the summer as we know they are an enjoyable listen during a walk, workout or drive.

Before you switch off, we would just like to say a massive thankyou for your unfaultering commitment to ensuring PE is a Positive Experience for as many young people as possible but also for your engagement with PE Scholar.

Review of the year

In an attempt to try to summarise some of the big moments and popular posts as a bit of a highlight reel to revisit, here are a few reminders of things that have happened this academic year:

• Our Primary Concept Curriculum launched in July has been adopted by lots of schools and is getting great feedback , well done Lee and everyone involved in that
• GCSE Components of fitness posters for AQA, Edexcel & OCR – it is great to see these on the walls in schools
• PRICELESS skills in PE poster – again great to see this on display in schools and being discussed
• Additional ‘activity prompt cards‘ in our resource library to support with essential rules, common misconceptions and key skill teaching points
• Mentoring models
• Adaptive Teaching
• Preparing to become a Primary PE teacher course – thanks to an amazing team of authors led by Dr Vicky Randall, this free to access course joins the ‘preparing to become a physical education teacher‘ course. Collectively they have been accessed by over 500 trainee teachers. We also released our PE Mentor Training course, again free to access and massive thanks to Dr Shrehan Lynch for leading on this.
• British Rowing circuit training resource pack download – again, so many schools making use of these circuit training resource cards and more
• NGB links for free resources
• Unit planning with a difference materials
  • Invasion Games
  • Net/ Wall Games
  • Striking & Fielding Games
• Positive Experiences PE pack – wow, what a collective effort and what a response
• Head, Heart Hands Tracker 2.0, big shout out to Jon Campbell for this one

The following super seven items require an extra special mention:

Concept Curriculum – with hundreds of schools who have adopted our CC worldwide and our commitment to continued improvement and support, we plan to invite anyone who has bought the resource to a dedicated community space in September to collaborate and share ideas further.

Positive Experiences PE Pack – a massive team effort that reached 1,000s of educators and remains free to download to all … and we have plans for a part 2 of this which we hope to get out next academic year

PE Passport – for anyone wanting a solution to planning, assessing, evidencing and reporting their whole offer for PE … look no further and get a free trial or book an online demo now.

Events – Our Pedagogy in Practice Conference welcomed many of you to the University of Gloucestershire for a jam-packed practical day with the team. We loved this and hope to do it again soon but we have also been thrilled to attend 31 different conferences nationwide since January 2024 alone and to continue to receive such positive feedback from delegates makes it all worthwile. With a batting average of 4.62/ 5 for quality, we would encourage anyone seeking a conference keynote, workshop or in school support to get in touch ASAP as we are already booking up fast for the 2024/25 season.

Oak Curriculum Partners – this commission has been a massive achievement for the whole team. This DfE funded piece of work that is being expertly led by Oak National Academy aims to put high-quality teaching materials and a well sequenced curriculum into the hands of anyone who wants it, for free. We will keep you posted but early feedback from the Subject Expert Group, Oak’s Curriculum Board and most importantly teachers and pupils in school who have been testing the prototype lessons has been really positive. Massive thanks to Catherine Fitzpatrick and the team at Complete PE, we could not do this without you!

and here is a reminder of the dream team joining Catherine Fitzpatrick and Will Swaithes to make this happen from September:

PE Insights Podcast – with 27 recordings in the bank in less than a year and over 15k listens already, Nathan has done an amazing job of getting you access to some great minds and examples of how physical education can have such a positive impact. We welcome anyone keen to feature, especially practitioners still in school and keen to share your story. Complete this expression of interest form if you are interested and we will be back in touch.

Looking ahead

It is incredible to think what has been achieved with our team of 12, all of whom have significant roles and responsibilities beyond PE Scholar as well. With 9 Content Creators coming onboard from September alongside our collaboration with Catherine Fitzpatrick from Complete PE to deliver amazing teaching resources for key stages 1-4 including GCSE PE for Oak and an additional 9 Associates who join us to bring ideas and energy …. you will want to keep tuned into what next. This includes a new app that is in the final stages of beta testing.

Summer Reading

Ahead of what we hope will be a restful and recharging summer break, we wanted to get your summer reading off to a flying start with 10% off all our books – so whether you are going away or staying at home, why not grab yourself a book to keep you company and inspire your planning for next year.

Join us

Thanks to all our members who enable us to keep creating, collaborating and sharing. One and three-year membership packages are available for individuals or teams and if you are not already part of our extended family then please can we encourage you to join now and be part of the action.