The Benefits of Specialist Sports Providers

How specialist sports providers can help your school

The term ‘specialist sports providers’ refers to any external body which specialises in delivering sports and wellbeing in school. Specialist sports providers aren’t a direct replacement for local sports clubs or PE teachers; instead, they offer a complimentary service which can be hugely beneficial to your school.

Is a specialist sports provider right for your school? We’ve gathered some of the ways in which they can help your pupils to get active.

A wide range of activities:

Each pupil has different strengths, weaknesses and areas of interest, which means that one sport alone can’t cater for your school’s needs. It can be expensive and arduous to find a separate coach for each sport your pupils might want to try. It can also be very difficult for PE teachers to learn specific sports to a high enough standard, amongst their already busy schedules.

Specialist sports providers have coaches who are trained in a wide variety of activities, allowing them to offer the classic popular sports, as well those that are brand new to pupils. With such an expansive repertoire to call on, coaches can cater their sessions to the needs of the pupils and Ofsted alike, whilst providing variation and flexibility.

Improved pupil engagement

There is a unique challenge found in school sports which isn’t found in dedicated clubs: capturing the attention and imagination of every pupil in a class. After all, each pupil responds to different teaching methods and plays at different abilities – it’s also likely that there’s a few pupils who don’t enjoy the sport being taught.

Fortunately, this is a core element of training for specialist sports providers, who understand the wide range of skills it takes to make sure every child is active and engaged. Coaches can adapt the activities to match the abilities of the individual children and have a host of tricks to keep the focus levels high. Every teacher knows that this is a skill gained from experience and requires an in-depth knowledge of the subject you’re teaching.

Integration with the wider curriculum

It’s one thing to be able to teach the skills for a particular sport, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to coach with an awareness of the national and school curriculum. That’s a skill which you can find in Premier Education’s coaches. We train our staff to be able to see the bigger picture and have an awareness of the other subjects taught in your school. This helps give an extra layer of understanding for pupils of both the sport and the complementary subjects. This integration is woven into the activity planning stage, so it’s demonstrable to Ofsted.

Flexible hours

Finally, for specialist sports providers, activity provision is their full-time job. This means that coaches can deliver enrichment sessions before, after and during school, covering a far wider range of hours than teachers have available. Using external coaches instead of your own staff is a cost-effective way to free up teacher PPA time whilst improving your pupil’s experience simultaneously.

Does this sound like something which would benefit your school?

Premier Education is the UK’s #1 provider of sports and physical activities to primary schools. As part of that, we act as a specialist sports provider for over 2,500 primary schools across the country. If you’re after a tried and trusted solution, get in contact today.