This project aims to develop sporting ability and fundamental movement skills while also engaging children’s interest and enjoyment in physical activity.

In addition to this and the main objective of the programme is to provide support to the schools teaching staff, as their class teachers are present at each session we deliver.

They are actively involved in the session delivery and are given access to our session plans and systems of work for the term. This therefore increases the teacher’s confidence in delivering a Sports Specific lesson to the children, thus enhancing the children’s education by Up-skilling each individual school teacher.

The project is mainly delivered in 9/10 week blocks across both Key Stage 1 and 2 with 8 schools being visited a week in the Wisbech area alone. This results in approx. 960 children being engaged in sport and physical activity a week, impacting immensely on the health and wellbeing of the community by delivering in Curriculum time.

Each block of coaching for Key Stage 2 culminates in a festival where the schools compete against each other. These festivals engage between 100-130 children per Festival. All of the winning teams at the festivals are invited and giving an adult and child ticket for a home league game with Certificates and Trophies also being presented.

On Tuesday 16th May, we used the ABAX Stadium for the Wisbech Schools Football Festival which saw 6 schools across Yr3/4 and Yr 5/6 complete in a 6-a-side competition on the Stadium pitch. The Festival was a great success with loads of children enjoying playing football in a stadium environment putting together all of their hard work across the block of work into action.

The Premier League have been very supportive to us as a Foundation this year providing us access to the PL Primary Stars Programme. We are now beginning to plan ahead for next year and are looking for new schools to join us within this programme expanding the reach and impact within the local community. The Programme will also now see us delivering and supporting school Cross-Curriculum in Maths, English and PSHE.

If anyone would like to find any more details about the programme please feel free to contact Matthew Dye on matthew.dye@theposh.com.

View more pictures from the schools football festival online here.