Primary PE and Sport Premium

The Department for Education has confirmed that the PESP funding will continue at £320 million for the 2020/21 academic year. The funding is a ring fenced grant for English primary schools to provide additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of PESSPA. Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of their Physical Education (PE), physical activity and sport. For further information relating to the PESP funding and school's requirements, including information on the use of underspend from 2019/20 please visit: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pe-and-sport-premium-for-primary-schools#coronavirus-covid-19-update

This means that you should use the premium to:

• develop or add to the PE, physical activity and sport that your school provides
• build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years

Schools should use the premium to secure improvements in the following 5 key indicators:

• The engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity – the Chief Medical Officer guidelines recommend that all children and young people aged 5 to 18 engage in at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day, of which 30 minutes should be in school
• The profile of PE and sport is raised across the school as a tool for whole-school improvement
• Increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport
• Broader experience of a range of sports and activities offered to all pupils
• Increased participation in competitive sport

Flexibility to carry forward any unspent PESP funding

As a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the Department for Education has taken steps to relax the ring-fencing arrangements for the PESP funding in the 2019 to 2020 academic year to allow any unspent grant to be carried forward into the next academic year (2020 to 2021). Where schools are carrying forward under-spends, their published online report should set out the amount being carried forward and give brief reasons for this under-spend.

Any under-spends carried forward will need to be spent in full by 31 March 2021 and schools should factor this into spending plans for their 2020 to 2021 PE and Sport Premium allocation. The 2019 to 2020 conditions of grant document has been updated to reflect this exceptional amendment to the ring-fencing of the grant.

Effect of Covid 19 on PESP plans

The onset of Covid-19 has resulted in a significant impact on the utilisation of PESP during 2020. We are therefore trying to gather as much intelligence across Birmingham between now and the end of September 2020 to better understand the PESP impact from 2019/20 and individual school plans to carry forward any investment.

To better understand the effect of COVID-19 on schools' plans and to ensure that appropriate support can be made available, we have created a very short survey monkey questionnaire: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SB-PESP-2019-20

We would be extremely grateful if you could please complete (should take around 5 minutes), which will help us pull together key trends, insights and recommendations for Birmingham, Sport England and DfE. All schools completing the survey will be entered into a prize draw for equipment vouchers.

We are also requesting if a number of Birmingham primary schools could also participate in a 30-45 minute 1-1 zoom call with a member of the Sport Birmingham team, to gain a more detailed picture. If your school is willing to participate, then please contact Jayne Piller at Jayne.piller@sportbirmingham.org

Further information and all relevant documentation related to PESP can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pe-and-sport-premium-for-primary-schools

Key Improvement Indicators

The DfE have released 5 key indicators that they feel schools should expect to see improvement across if using the premium correctly:

• the engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity - the Chief Medical Officer guidelines recommend that all children and young people aged 5 to 18 engage in at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day, of which 30 minutes should be in school
• the profile of PE and sport is raised across the school as a tool for whole-school improvement
• increased confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and sport
• broader experience of a range of sports and activities offered to all pupils
• increased participation in competitive sport

Sport Birmingham's Role

Our role, as the city's Active Partnership, is to offer guidance and support in terms of your PE & Sport Premium. We do this by:

• Supporting schools to develop teaching and learning for staff by signposting and facilitating continual professional development opportunities.
• Offering 1 to 1 support through our School Sport Advisor service. Our advisor works with schools to offer specialist advice and support to develop high quality PE & School Sport bespoke to your needs.
• Supporting schools to help build capacity within their staff by signposting to appropriate partners such as afPE, Youth Sport Trust, Sports Coach UK and local partners; minimum operating standards of coaches, and establishing links to local physical activity opportunities and sport clubs.
• Supporting schools to gain access to additional funding streams.
• General support e.g. advice on purchasing kit and equipment, or how to increase schools access to competition.

We are also tasked with looking at Primary School's websites to see if their spending has been uploaded and feeding this information back to the DfE via the Active Partnerships team. We will use this information as a source of data to develop wider insight into the impact of the PE & Sport Premium funding within Birmingham.