We were very pleased to award Chauncy the PE Major Award for 2020/21. Their project was to rebuild their long jump pit which has been condemned since 2018. Not only that, but for the award amount, they are also going to convert it to a double-ended pit to enable more pupils to practise.
Marissa Mason, Head of PE, managed to narrowly beat a large field of PE applicants (including another long jump pit application) by putting forward some strong arguments for her project e.g.
“Long jump and triple jump have not been a part of our KS3 curriculum for athletics since 2017. Students are desperate to be taught the full range of athletics events. Having two pits will enable more participation in each lesson with highly levels of group and individual feedback from teachers.”
“At KS4, both our GCSE and Cambridge National students (approximately 200 students from year 9-11)have also suffered practically when studying athletics in the summer term due to limited provision. Students in both courses are assessed in 3 sports across their GCSE years. We have been unable to offer athletics due to the limits created by not having a safe and usable long jump area.”
“In preparation for any competitions, we currently take our students to Wodson Park at a high rental cost to give them experience of these events before they compete. This is also the case for all our exam classes assessments.”
Among other things, Marissa also wrote about how Chauncy are trying to improve athletics overall which would be helped enormously by the new pit e.g:
“Athletics has been our main focus to improve over the past 5 years. We have been working closely with HAWKS athletic club to improve our teaching of each event. Our athletics clubs in school are becoming increasing better attended with students from years 7-11.”
In summary, some of the main arguments that gave Chauncy the edge in their application were:
- This would re-introduce an essential sport which they had not been able to offer for a number of years.
- They were improving on their previous offering (double-ended pit)
- They had managed to find an excellent value-for-money solution which can be actioned quickly.
Congratulations to Marissa and her team and we look forward to seeing photographs of the new pit in operation soon.