Sports Premium
What is the Sports Premium?
The primary PE & Sport Premium was introduced in March 2013 to improve the provision of Physical Education and school sport in primary schools across England. The £150 million per year funding is provided jointly by the Department of Education, Health, and Culture, Media & Sport (DFE, DH, DCMS). The funding is allocated directly to primary schools and is ring-fenced. This means it may only be spent on improving the provision of PE & sport in schools. In February 2014 the government committed to continue the funding until 2020.
In the 2016 Budget, Chancellor George Osborne announced that the revenue from the soft drinks industry levy would be used to double the Primary PE & Sport Premium from £160 million per year to £320 million per year from September 2017, to help schools to support healthier, more active lifestyles. This additional funding will enable primary schools to make further improvements to the quality and breadth of PE & sport they offer.
Purpose of funding
The PE & Sport Premium must be spent by schools on ‘making additional and sustainable improvements to the provision of PE and sport’ for the benefit of all pupils to encourage the development of healthy, active lifestyles.
This means that the funding should be used to develop or add to the PE and sport activities that the schools already offer and/or make improvements now that will benefit pupils joining the school in future years.
For example, funding can be used to:
- Hire qualified sports coaches to work alongside teachers
- Provide existing staff with training or resources to help them teach PE & Sport more confidently and effectively.
- Introduce new sports or activities to encourage more pupils to take part.
- Support and involve the least active children by running or extending school sports clubs, holiday clubs and Change4life clubs.
- Run sports competitions
- Increase pupils’ participation in school games.
- Sun sports activities in partnership with other schools.
Funding cannot be used:
- To employ coaches of specialist teachers to cover planning, preparation and assessment time (PPA)
- For teaching the minimum requirements of the national curriculum PE programmes of study, including those specified for swimming.
