Bohunt School Worthing is a purpose built, modern and innovative Academy school opened in September 2015 and has since grown into a vibrant and successful 11-16 comprehensive school in the heart of the Worthing community, where their young people and staff genuinely enjoy, respect and achieve. The Academy is part of the Bohunt Education Trust.
We are delighted to have partnered with colleagues at Bohunt School Worthing over the last 15 months to support their Physical Education provision and the wellbeing of their young people. In this case study we will explore how they have developed their PE curriculum and wider extra-curricular provision to create personally relevant PE for all their young people.
Brilliant Head of PE, Gary Weedon, will talk us through how they approached this challenge and the impact on their young people.
Intent
‘Traditionally we have been very strong at invasion games and our extra curricular programme has been brilliant for our ‘sporty’ children but we were finding that some of our young people were a bit lethargic in Key Stage 4 PE and maybe not getting as much as they could from their PE curriculum experience.
We wanted to create a curriculum that inspired all of our young people and was personally relevant to their interests and passions so that it would motivate them towards lifelong participation in physical activity and making positive health choices in the future.
We were also conscious of some of the experiences our girls were receiving in PE and the national context. In 2022 Sport England conducted a study ‘Women in Sport’. Their findings were that 43% of girls that felt that they were sporty as primary pupils but no longer see themselves this way, resulting in a reduction in participation in physical activity and sport.
We wanted to do something about that at Bohunt School Worthing so we pledged to have excellent opportunities to empower girls to reduce this statistic.
Implementation
Initially, we completed a student voice survey to get a clearer understanding of what our young people thought about their PE experiences and what they wanted PE to be like.
This feedback was used to adapt our PE pathways and choice at Key Stage 4 which now includes the following groups to cater for a range of personal interests:
GCSE PE / High Performance
Traditional Sports
Aesthetics & Non-Traditional Sports
Health and Wellbeing
This academic year, our Key Stage 4 students were given the choice in September to choose a sport and activity pathways.
Our wonderful Mrs Kinall has created a bespoke “health and wellbeing” pathway with the help of the “Rise Up Programme”. This encapsulates and promotes the mental, physical and social benefits that sport and exercise offer, to promote lifelong participation and learning.
Each unit of lessons has both a practical and theory focus, including goal setting, healthy habits and coping strategies. Students have an opportunity to contribute and share experiences should they wish, with the aim to equip them with tools to help them now and in the future.
We have a different focus each half term and use a different facility to keep the RISE physical activity aspect exciting for our young people. Students have participated in yoga, boxercise, circuit training, team building and problem solving so far this year.
As a team we took part in Trauma Informed PE training in the summer to be able to support our more vulnerable young people.
By learning about how we can intentionally create psychological safety through our visuals and vocals cues and listening to our young people we have been able to create a more inclusive learning environment. A number of our EAL students and care experienced young people have particularly benefitted from this approach.
Engaging our Girls
At Bohunt School Worthing we pride ourselves on creating an inclusive environment and equal opportunities for all. We strive to improve our curriculum and extra-curricular offer to harness the opportunities and engagement in physical activity and sport for all, especially girls.
Girls' participation is a focus for our co–curriculum programme. Last year saw a record amount of girls participating in sports and fixtures across all year groups in Netball, Basketball, Football, Rounders, Cricket, Athletics, Gymnastics and much more. We run girls only football and basketball clubs, dance club in addition to all other mixed gender clubs creating a gender inclusive environment.
This year we have our brilliant exams officer, Miss Paterson, leading our first This Girl Can RISE Up fitness club. Miss Paterson hosts a variety of different fitness circuits every week. This club aims to give girls a safe space to feel supported and motivated by their female peers and staff, while being physically active outside of their PE lessons.
We have been delighted that a number of non-traditional ‘sporty girls’ attend this club regularly with an emphasis on feeling strong and healthy. Female staff across the Academy are encouraged to work out with our girls and they act as brilliant role models to showcase that movement for health benefits is for everyone.
We really appreciate Miss Paterson leading this club as it adds extra capacity to our team so we can cater for as many young people as possible.
Girls leading girls
Our brilliant PE teacher, Miss Moore, has created a girls' leadership programme, and our leaders planned and delivered a fantastic inclusive team Basketball festival for our Year 7 and 8 girls. This resulted in creating opportunities for 35 of our girls to take part in physical activity in a psychologically safe environment.
It has been great to see our leaders so enthusiastic to not only host events but to further develop and increase girls' engagement in our younger years.
Impact:
At the start of this journey we completed the school wellbeing scorecard to track the starting point of our wellbeing provision. Initially we scored 47%.
We then completed the scorecard again recently and improved our score by 28% to 75%.
We have been delighted to see an increase in student engagement in our curricular and extra curricular provision. I have had numerous conversations with our young people who love being able to choose their option pathway and feel psychologically safer in PE because of it.
Our young people definitely prefer having a choice and we have seen greater effort and engagement in our key stage 4 PE lessons as a result. By introducing the 4 pathways, it has allowed us to have meaningful PE lessons with meaningful outcomes for different groups of students.
We have also been delighted with our highest ever numbers of young people engaging in our extra-curricular programme and young people accessing it that we weren’t previously reaching. Our girls are flourishing and we are proud that their PE experience is now fun and more personally relevant. It is developing their motor competence, with space for social interactions and the right level of challenge to keep them motivated.’
Contributing to whole school outcomes
Paul Collin, the inspirational headteacher at Bohunt School Worthing, said:
‘I am extremely proud of our PE staff and department who over the last 12 months have worked very hard to foster the ongoing development of both school sport and physical education as well as health and mental wellbeing for our students.
I believe it is imperative to engage students in all aspects of physical education, ensuring that students recognise that PE is as much about competition as it is about health and fitness. We have been thankful to work with Neil and Future Action and would recommend both Neil and the Rise Up programme to any school as a pathway for success and enrichment for young people.’
If you would like to know more about the brilliant work taking place within the department, click here to read their PE and Health guide.
Do you want to improve your students' wellbeing?
Take the first steps here by completing our 'School Wellbeing Scorecard here.
This action will help you map your school's wellbeing provision in 3 minutes and identify the key areas to focus on for your setting.
You will receive a personalised report and a complimentary login to our taster ‘RISE Up’ course. Here you will be able to experience Step 1 and 2 of our 9 Step RISE Up teacher training course.
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Have a brilliant week.