Our Physical Education curriculum is designed to give all pupils the best opportunity to Learn, Lead and Make a Difference through sport.

Students experience a broad and balanced range of activities that aim to develop their fundamental movement skills, whilst also encompassing the non-physical aspects of sport. A great emphasis is placed on leadership and creativity in each stage of the PE programme and pupils are actively encouraged to take risks during their lessons, with the intention of helping them develop into resilient sportspeople.

Teaching is consistently delivered to a high standard, by our passionate department, and we strive to ensure that our pupils are always appropriately challenged and supported in the classroom. Freemen’s students also have the opportunity to learn in our first class facilities, which provide a highly stimulating environment for teaching and learning.

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Freemen's Sport Philosophy

“We put pupils first in order to achieve our objective of making them better people who participate in physical activity for life.”

In order to do this we follow the 5 P’s outlined below;

Pupils - We treat each pupil as an individual and give them the opportunity to forge their own path of physical activity to suit them. To do this we ensure our programme is broad, to enable pupils to try numerous sports, and give our pupils a choice of activity in Games for their latter years at the School, making our programme more relevant to each of our pupils.

People - Physical activity can make pupils better people. A recent HMC study highlighted that physical activity has a positive correlation with mental toughness and well-being. These alongside numerous other psychological and sociological benefits are the underpinning reasons for physical activity in School. In PE lessons, we look to teach beyond physical literacy and sporting skills, and focus on other key life skills such as leadership, resilience, creativity, honesty, self-organisation and kindness.

Participation - We want pupils to have a passion for physical activity so they participate in physical activity long after leaving Freemen’s. Around 90% of all pupils played in formalised fixtures in 2018-19, including 98% of Junior School pupils. The vast majority of our pupils are physically active three or more times a week and every pupil in the school is physically active at least once a week.

Progression – Each and every time a pupil takes part in Physical Activity they should be progressing. Some of this progression lower down the School may be through deliberate play. We aim to make each pupil the best they can be, whilst ensuring that each team can achieve their collective potential. In PE we aim to be progressive, by teaching key skills within a variety of activities to develop physical literacy and pupil competency in that specific activity, whilst building a passion and confidence in Physical Activity.

Performance - Performance in a sports programme is important, but winning is not necessarily the priority. We believe in teaching via processes and, if the processes leading to the competition are correct, the score ultimately takes care of itself. Even for high performers the emphasis is on having fun, whilst progressing towards individual and team goals. We will soon be launching a Performance Programme in the Senior School for those who represent their county or beyond, in order to develop them as sportspeople. Performance in teams can also be important, and we aim to develop this through high level coaching and mentoring, including video analysis.

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