Your School Sports Premium and how to spend it
What is a School Sports Premium?
The PE and Sports Premium is a government fund which puts a total of £320m into promoting sports and activities for primary-age children in the UK. It’s managed by the Department for Education, is available to almost all schools in the country and hopes to encourage more pupils to stay active and engaged with a wider variety of sports.
How can my school use the Sports Premium?
The premium can be spent in any way which increases or improves your current offering of PE, physical activity and sport. There are dozens of areas a school can potentially invest in but the aim should always be to improve awareness, facilities, equipment, coaching, or the variation of activities on offer.
Crucially, this means that the premium can’t be used to simply fund a school’s current offer – it must be used on expansion and development.
How do most schools invest the Sports Premium?
To answer this, we conducted our own research, interviewing dozens of decision makers in primary schools to find out how they spend their own PE and Sports premium.
Listening to their answers, we identified the four most popular areas for investment*. These figures will hopefully help your school decide on the safest, most effective ways to invest:
- Equipment purchase (42%)
- External coaching services (40%)
- Staff training/CPD (24%)
- Facility investment (19%)
*figures represent percentage of schools who used funds for that purpose, not percentage of funds allocated.
How can my school make the most of the Sports Premium?
As the allocated budget relates to the number of pupils in your school and not your requirements, it’s crucial to allocate the funds appropriately. When looking at cost effective solutions, it’s most effective to invest into areas which provide multiple services for one price.
For example, being able to hire or buy all your equipment from one provider can cut down on unnecessary expenditure. Equally, a coaching service which provides a wide range of activities will be easier on the budget than approaching several businesses.
How can Premier Education help?
With increasing daily demands on teachers, many school leaders told us that they’re reluctant to invest in sports training for their staff who are already working so hard to provide the best experience for their pupils. That’s where we come in. Premier Education’s coaches are trained and experienced in a wide range of activities, we’ll help you save on training costs whilst providing regular high-quality activity coaching.
We pride ourselves on being able to combine several services in a single, bespoke package. Our coaches come with their own equipment and are trained to adapt to your school’s current facilities, reducing the need to invest elsewhere. What’s more, they’re trained to deliver a range of unusual sports, along with the classic favourites, meaning you can instantly increase your pupil engagement.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help your school’s PE and Sports Premium go further.
