Do you have a nationally recognised badge of excellence for PE and SCHOOL SPORT?

Posted February 22, 2019

The Youth Sport Trust, are a UK based national children’s charity who are passionate about ensuring a future where every child enjoys the benefits of sport and play, and have an overarching mission to develop pioneering new ways of using sport to improve children’s wellbeing and provide them with a brighter future. One of the myriad ways in which they have attempted to achieve this is a quality mark to help support schools audit their PE (Physical Education) provision.

The Youth Sport Trust Quality Mark was launched in 2012, and is an online self-review tool which supports schools in examining their PE provision and in turn identify priorities for the development of PE and the school as a whole.

The completion of the Youth Sport Trust Quality Mark provides recognition for a schools commitment to the development of high quality physical education, physical activity and school sport, in addition to the use of PE as a tool for addressing the wider priorities of the school.

This online self-review tool allows schools to benchmark your provision with three different awards, which are aligned with national standards via a common inspection framework from Ofsted – the governments national school inspection department – the first award, bronze, is for those with “emerging” provision, the second, silver, is for those who have “established” provision, and the gold award is for those who have “embedded” provision. The Quality Mark – once attained – lasts for two years before re-evaluation is required.

The in-depth tool asks the school to reflect on all aspects of their physical provision offer, therefore encouraging a thorough reflection of such practice. Those schools who are “Going for Gold”, are afforded a validation visit from an expert provided by the Youth Sport Trust, as well as additional support and guidance on how to best develop and embed practice in their school.

Schools that have gone through the process to complete the Youth Sport Trust Quality Mark almost exclusively state that their reasons for doing so are to help identify and prioritise further development, and highlight the strength of PE in the school. The mark is also a celebration of the work being done, both for children and staff, at the school, and should be a proud moment for everyone involved!

Furthermore, every school that submitted a completed Quality Mark review between September and December 2018 were placed in a draw to win one of three Youth Sport Trust Athlete Mentor Visits to the school, where elite athletes from a variety of sports come to the school to engage the students and deliver bespoke interventions through assemblies, workshops and master classes, which in turn support a range of whole school outcomes, not simply to get students more active, but also to tackle declining emotional wellbeing and resilience in young people and improve overall behavior.

To find out more, visit:
https://www.youthsporttrust.org/membership

or contact:

The Quality Mark can be accessed by all Youth Sport Trust members through the YST website:
www.youthsporttrust.org/quality-mark