Thomas’s Academy is committed to ensuring pupils are engaged in physical activity, kick-starting active healthy lifestyles.

This is achieved through PE lessons, PHSE lessons learning about a healthy body and also through a new scheme for the 20/21 academic year: the ‘walk to school’ initiative. Children are encouraged to walk/scoot/cycle to and from school everyday and the class that has walked the most miles at the end of the week get a trophy, with the child who walks the most in each class getting a certificate.

Our primary aim is to equip all children to enjoy sport for its health and social benefits, and those pupils that thrive on competition are encouraged to develop their skills and to succeed in their chosen sports. In KS2, we focus on a different sport every half term. Such sports include, football, basketball, gymnastics and rounders. In KS1, for the first term, we focus on our ABCs (agility, balance and coordination) before moving onto team sports. Every class from Year 1 to Year 6 also undertakes the daily mile at the start of every lesson. This is to encourage movement and to have our children as fit and healthy as possible.

All children from Year 1 to Year 6 receive two hours per week of high quality Physical Education lessons; this includes swimming for year 3. Any children who are unable to confidently swim after the year 3 program continue lessons the following year. This also includes dance for Year 6. Nursery and Reception children receive 1 hour of specific PE input per week, where the focus is, again, on our ABCs. Nursery children also have ballet lessons once a week with a specialist teacher.

Thomas’s Academy employs a specialist full time Physical Education teacher. Pupils develop fundamental skills which they can apply to a range of sports and we encourage all children to participate in sports and active competition outside of school to further increase those skills. Furthermore, we are involved in sporting fixtures throughout the borough and we are beginning to have inter-house competitions as well to encourage movement and healthy competition.

The impact of this P.E. focus has seen a huge increase in the variety of sports available to our children allowing them to experience competition in a wide range of sports, including dodgeball and netball.