Blog: Yorkshire at the forefront of national guidance for schools

Last weekend, the Department for Education released guidance for schoolsthat had a significant influence from our region, blogs Alex Ogden, our Education Lead at Yorkshire Sport Foundation.  

The document aims to support schools to deliver the aims of the School sport and activity action plan, released collaboratively by the DCMS, DHSC and the DfE last summer. That document laid out how the government intended to support senior leaders and teachers to provide high-quality PE and sport for at least two hours a week, although that’s not mandatory.  There was also a drive to achieve equality of access for girls and boys. 

The non-statutory guidance released earlier at the weekend has four aims: 

• Embedding PE and school sport into the school ethos and culture 
• School approaches to timetabling at least 2 hours of curriculum PE 
• School approaches to ensuring a high level of uptake in extra-curricular sport and physical activity 
• Delivering equal opportunity to access PE and sport programmes 

Within each of those four areas, there are case studies from schools around the country, talking about their rationale and how they’ve gone about it, in the hope other schools will read it and understand better how they can take the learning and implement similar approaches in their school. This is where our region has had a strong influence. 

In Autumn last year, we were invited to suggest case studies to be considered for the guidance.  The team at DfE have spent quite a bit of time in West Yorkshire over the last 18 months, in particular Bradford, seeing some of the transformative impact of Creating Active Schools, so they are aware of some of what is happening in Yorkshire. 

We worked with schools locally to submit case studies, and through the CAS national network that we coordinate in partnership with University of Bradford, we were able to get a wider set of case studies. It has resulted in Academy St. James, Girlington Primary (both Bradford), Westerton Primary Academy (Leeds), as well as north-east schools, Easterside Academy and Red Hall Primary being included in the guidance, as part of the CAS partnership with Tees Valley Sport.  All five of those schools are being supported by the CAS national network through local partnerships and CAS Champions. 

Of course, Creating Active Schools was co-designed in Yorkshire and is now starting to have an impact both internationally and nationally, with over 250 schools across the country being supported by local CAS partnerships, including others in the Active Partnership network. 

More locally, both schools in Bradford have been supported by the JU:MP and University of Bradford team, who deserve great credit for the role they have played in supporting more than 50 schools across the district to create a culture of physical activity. These two schools being highlighted as examples for other schools to learn from is a true reflection of the impact of their work, which we are very proud to support. 

We know there are many more examples across Yorkshire of schools doing great things to get children more active and initiatives like our Centre of Excellence programme aims to shine a light on those settings. 

If your school would like some support on implementing any of the recommendations in the new guidance, or would like to submit an application for Centre of Excellence status, get in touch.