Eleanor Palmer is proud to be an active school that provides an inclusive P.E. curriculum as well as a range of extra-curricular activities to engage and stretch all children. Children look forward to their P.E. lessons, where challenge, praise and success are key, and P.E. has a high status within our school community.
We offer a wide (and changing) range of sports for the children to participate in, which help children to understand the importance of an active lifestyle and associated health benefits. These sports are planned carefully to build skills progressively across the school – see our Progression Map for more information.
Inclusion is central to our ethos so lessons are carefully planned and delivered to ensure all children participate actively and experience success. We teach a wide range of team sports such as basketball, football, cricket and dodgeball and children compete in numerous borough wide events, with selective teams and inclusive squads to engage children of all levels of confidence. Every year we offer free before and after school sports clubs in football, basketball, athletics, tennis, dodgeball, benchball and gymnastics, all of which were full. These were all targeted towards and well-attended by children who would otherwise not access these opportunities.
Children develop a range of physical skills and learn numerous sports that encourage teamwork and leadership. The ‘3 Lap Challenge’ encourages and tracks the aerobic fitness levels of our children, while also promoting personal goal-setting, growth mind-set and aspiration in sports. We see the impact of this growth mind-set across the children’s attitudes to learning in all subjects. All children are expected to push themselves in PE, and ‘Sports Postcards’ are used to feedback positive praise to grownups when children show particular effort.
We hold a Sports Day at Parliament Hill running track each July and take part in annual events such as the Camden Swimming Gala, Athletics tournament, Cross Country (involving all our Junior children) and other inclusive events organized by the borough. We enter a girls and boys team into both the Year 3/4 and Year 5/6 Camden Schools football tournaments and have won the ‘fair-play’ trophy in 19/20 and 20/21. In 2023 we came first in the CSSA Boys’ Basketball, and the Small Schools’ Athletics Championships. Although we are a small school, we always finish in the top third of events giving our most able children are given a chance to shine.
Almost all of our children (and staff!) walk, cycle or scooter to school each day and we are committed to walking as much as possible – for example, we utilise the great resource of Hampstead Heath for class activities and every class walks to the swimming pool when taking lessons. All children in Years 1-6 will participate in a fortnight of daily intensive swimming lessons. In 2022-23 – 97% of our year 6 pupils could swim at least 25 metres.
We use our ring-fenced government sports grant (£17,800 over 2023-24) to support the delivery and provision of P.E.