We love sport!
Our commitment is to give each Windmill child a multitude of opportunities to access high quality sport and physical education. We aim to inspire skill development through practise, participation in friendly competition and a better understanding of healthy and active lifestyles.
Our success has been recognised through our School Games Mark Awards: Bronze in 2015-16, progressing to Silver in 2016-17 and we have now achieved the Gold award in consecutive years since then.
Our PE curriculum and extended offer gives all children, regardless of age or ability, a broad range of experiences to encourage and inspire them to participate in competitive sport and physically demanding challenges as part of a healthy and active lifestyle. In PE we nurture agility, balance and coordination skills through running, jumping, throwing and catching skills. As children grow older these skills can be applied in a range of team games, dance and gymnastics. In our inclusive PE sessions all children experience the opportunity to take a lead and apply their skills in performances and/or competitions.
All children participate in competitive sport, whether against classmates, houses, year groups, or other local groups and schools. Many competitions are organised to tie in with our School Games Mark award which we aim to achieve by the end of each academic year.
Swimming lessons are provided for all children in Years 5 and 6. Our aim is for all children leaving Year 6 to be able to swim 25 metres unaided. The years 2019-20 and 2020-21 were disrupted due to COVID-19, but the usual percentage of children achieving this goal is above 60%. In 2022-23, this decreased to 32% of Year 6 pupils able to confidently swim at least 25 metres, but in 2023-24, this increased to 46%. 20% of pupils could demonstrate swimming a range of strokes effectively, and 20% could perform a safe self-rescue in different water-based situations. For more information about the importance of learning to swim in primary schools, please have a look at research done by Swim England.
An outdoor activity residential is available to all children in Years 2, 4 and 6 through our Deep and Diverse experiences commitment. Throughout the year a wide range of lunchtime and after-school sports clubs are available for children to get involved with.
Here at Windmill we aim to give children the best possible start to the rest of their lives and we truly believe that instilling an interest in sport and a healthy and active lifestyle is a key part of that. We use our Sport Premium funding to help us pursue our aims and our Sport Premium plan shows our strategy for developing children's healthy lifestyles.
Children in our school say:
'I love doing sport and anything physical really. It makes me feel truly alive!'
'There are so many sports clubs to choose from at Windmill, I wish I could be in them all!'
'Doing PE and Science at school has helped me learn about having a healthy heart. I want to look after my heart by being careful about what I eat and doing plenty of exercise.'