Succeedin is working hard to create a game-changer in PE and sports education, and believes it has recently launched the platform that could enable teachers and pupils to achieve their goals. But it’s not stopping there and Succeedin already has exciting plans to broaden the services it offers.

During early 2015 it’s online platform was launched that’s accessible from anywhere, on any device delivering hundreds of simple, visual, clear PE lesson plans meeting all UK National Curriculum requirements across 14 key sports at Primary level. Recent successes demonstrate the opportunity to deliver benefits that extend well beyond improving the consistency and quality of at KS1 and KS2. They include delivering tools across later key stages, higher education and tackling broader PE challenges including Attainment, Curriculum Planning and even into more specialist Primary subjects such as Religious Education, Drama and Science.

It’s widely considered that the problems with PE education start at ‘grass-roots’ or Primary level. This may be partly that, according to our research, teachers at this level don’t feel adequately qualified to teach PE. It also shows that teachers receive little more than a few hours of specific PE training, and that the challenge of devising an interesting, progressive and appropriate curriculum for a school often falls to someone with little experience in doing so.

A recent survey for Virgin Active found that upwards of 40% of pupils leave Primary school with a fundamental dislike of PE. The survey also found that over 80% of teachers believe they need better tools and education, and many even rate their own PE classes as ‘poor’. Clearly this has a direct impact on the children, not only at this entry level but also beyond.

The latest UK National Curriculum for Primary levels KS1 and KS2 indicates why some of these issues exist. Of the 200 pages only 2 are specific to PE. It’s no surprise that for the most part teachers don’t enjoy teaching PE, are afraid, feel unqualified and believe they don’t have the right tools or support to be effective.

The opportunity for improvement across the entire subject is clear, and it could also significantly contribute in helping to address childhood obesity and general healthiness. Since the 2012 Olympics government has provided specific additional funding to schools to build their sporting legacy and tackling these issues. So, to some extent, the funding to change is available, what’s been lacking is the innovation of effective sustainable solutions to drive change.

Succeedin’s specialists have been involved across all levels of PE for many years, both in delivering interesting and engaging lessons and providing coaching and CPD for teachers and PE specialists. During this time they have seen very little improvement in the methods and tools available to teach PE. Conversely, in professional sports it is easy to see the direct link between improvements to sports coaching and performance.

Like many professional scenarios, Succeedin believes the effective use of technology can hugely contribute to achieving many of the improvements needed. During 2014 we designed both the platform and the content that we believed would directly lead to an increase in the confidence and capability of teachers and get them ‘teaching’ more effectively, and students learning a ‘mastery’ of key skills.

The first iteration of Succeedin platform was launched early 2015 and focused on provision of the core ‘visual lesson plans’ across KS1 and KS2. These were supported with simple clear guidance on delivery of lessons including setup, teaching notes, suggestions on progression, inclusion and cross curriculum benefits. Each lesson has been designed within an overall pathway, which enables progression for all levels whilst working toward key stage targets.

Since then Succeedin has been delighted by the level of interest; it quickly became clear that challenges faced by schools and PE leaders were not the all same but included planning, delivery, attainment, engagement, inspection and even equipment and resources.

The Succeedin team began creating a number of additional tools to support the teachers across the wider aspect of PE. We enter the Autumn term with tools to enable teachers to quickly, visually develop interesting sporting “curriculum” based on both Succeedin lesson plans as well as their own, plus the ability to support any number of educational pathways including Disability, Secondary, Coaching and even non sport subjects. In parallel we “go-live” with our first iteration of an achievement product, fully integrated into the wider system.

With our current platform we believe that we have already gone a long way to creating the innovation to help teachers and schools to be more effective and confident at teaching PE, but we are already working on an exciting roadmap of capabilities, products and services that will greatly extend the benefits to schools, teachers, pupils and parents over the coming weeks and months.

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