Looking Beyond Physical Activity

Wednesday 16th March 2022

Coombe Wood School, Croydon

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Our annual Sutton & Croydon SSP conference focused on how physical activity can contribute to developing those key life skills such as confidence, resilience, empathy, integrity and honesty.

After a tumultuous couple of years we decided to focus on these softer skills knowing how much importance is attached to them in our schools and how physical activity can contribute to their development. (Alongside being essential for good health and wellbeing).

After today's Conference I will be making sure my pupils are more active in Maths and Literacy

We had a variety of practical and theory-based workshops providing a plethora of ideas and inspiration. The workshops included: School Games Mark (YST), Table/Cage Cricket (Surrey Cricket Foundation), The Power of Leadership (ArchBishop LanFranc), Touch Tennis (Sutton Tennis & Squash), Parkour (Esprit Concrete), Physically Active Learning (TeachActive), Basketball (The GGx3 Team), The role that PE & SS can play in tackling societal inequalities (London Sport).

A big thank you to all our workshop facilitators, feedback was extremely positive and everyone took away either an activity or an idea to improve their practice back in school.

Ensuring I emphasise the other side of PE is taught and children are made aware of the personal and mental benefits

Our first keynote was Kate Thornton-Bousfield (Head of PE & Achievement, Youth Sport Trust) who gave us some key updates and introduced our theme. Kate set the tone for the day which got everybody starting to think about how they are delivering the curriculum in school and whether it might incorporate the teaching of 'softer skills' either implicitly or explicitly.

Our second keynote, Trish Patterson (Motivational Speaker, Avid Adventurer and Traveller, Hidden Strength), moved so many people with her life story. She talked about her life on Tristan Da Cunha, her experiences in Afghanistan and her love of extreme challenges such as Ultra Marathons. She focused on how sport had taught her so many important skills which enabled her to work as a team, keep going even when you want to give up, seek opportunities wherever possible and challenge yourself to take the next step, push yourself out of your comfort zone as that is where we grow and learn.   

Encouraging them to take that step forward and challenge themselves

The feedback for the day was very positive with everybody saying how useful the workshops were worth and how effective the keynote speakers were. We look forward to next year where we will be having SEND as our focus.