Furthermore, it has been shown that children engaged in daily Physical Education show superior motor fitness, academic performance, and attitude towards school versus their counterparts who did not participate in daily Physical Education.
In their teaching, the well qualified staff in the PE department draw on their significant experiences, both academic and from within the professional sporting environment, as well as continuing to demonstrate active and healthy lifestyles.
PE and swimming are compulsory throughout Key Stage 3 at Monmouth School for Boys. The broad PE curriculum provides ample opportunities for the boys to enhance their fundamental movement skills through undertaking skill acquisition, body management and health related fitness modules.
The activities offered include: gymnastics, badminton, basketball, athletics, tennis, hockey and health related fitness; each activity usually being undertaken for one half –term.
At this early developmental stage the emphasis is on enjoyment and breadth of experience in the role of ‘critical performer’. Boys are developing their appreciation of accurate and controlled movement patterns. Other roles such as ‘official’ and ‘organiser’ are introduced in Year 9 to aid the development of pupil cognitive processes in the sporting context and the use of inter-personal skills and communication. There are however, performance criteria for each activity against which boys are measured and specifically we aim to teach every pupil to swim 25m unaided.
The emphasis at Key stage 3 is to enable the pupils to make informed ‘life-style’ choices regarding diet, health and exercise. As such, all boys are inducted in how to use the school’s state of the art fitness suite and their fitness is monitored and recorded at least once every year
In addition to this, all boys play sport for two afternoons each week.
The department does not offer GCSE PE although all boys have two afternoons of sport per week as part of their core curriculum.
Physical Education helps students to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies to live healthy and physically active lives at school and for the rest of their life. By learning ‘through and about’ movement, they will gain an understanding that movement is integral to human expression and can contribute to people’s pleasure and enhance their lives. Physical Education teaches students to critically inquire into the social and cultural significance of movement, so that they can better understand what influences people to engage and participate in physical activity and it provides authentic contexts in which to learn. Pupils challenge themselves to develop their physical and interpersonal skills required for working with and relating to others; this subject provides the learning opportunities to develop these skills. The specification offers breadth and balance – giving students the chance to study a wide array of theoretical areas that underpin physical education, whilst also getting the chance to experience and develop an interest in a variety of roles and activities. Under the three main titles of Physiology, Psychology and Sport and Society, the theoretical aspects of the AQA specification allow students to build on their knowledge from previous study and learn about factors that optimise performance.
Studying Physical Education facilitates a variety of career pathways and recent pupils have progressed to such careers as PE teaching, physiotherapy and sports journalism as well as less directly related careers such as engineering and military officer.
Pupils will study the following topics in class using a variety of up to date resources: text books, video clips and e-resources.
Head of Department: Mr A Jones
Board: AQA A level Syllabus Code: 7582
Component 1 – Paper 1: Written exam paper (2 hours) worth 35% of A level.
Component 2 – Paper 2: Written exam paper (2 hours) worth 35% of A level.
In addition, pupils will be assessed as a performer or coach in the full sided version of one activity and produce a written analysis and evaluation of performance which equates to 30% of A level marks.