“Exercise and recreation are as necessary as reading.  I will rather say more necessary, because health is worth more than learning.”
Thomas Jefferson

Physical Education promotes positive attitudes towards active and healthy lifestyles. Pupils learn how to think in different ways to suit a wide variety of creative, competitive and challenging activities. They learn how to plan, perform and evaluate actions, ideas and performances to improve their quality and effectiveness.

Through this process pupils discover their aptitudes, abilities and preferences as well as make choices about how to get involved lifelong physical activity

Sport and healthy living are firmly embedded in our curriculum and our school life here at Aston and Cote. We aim to give each child a minimum of two hours of quality PE teaching per week.  In addition, we offer a range of extra-curricular opportunities to develop sports skills over the year such as football, hockey and Aston Warriors: these are led by our qualified sport coach Sam Hook who also teaches each class for at least one PE session a week.

We are committed to enhancing the physical education and sporting experience of all our children. Our teachers have undertaken PE training with CREATE Development,

CREATE’s three central philosophies are:

• Creating clear, shared learning journeys
• Providing quality personalised opportunities
• Shifting responsibility towards the learner

Combining CREATE’s philosophies with our school values of Love, Courage and Respect has enabled us to transform the culture of physical activity.

We aim to provide experience of internal and external sports competitions and events to as many of our children as possible. Our children take part in regular sporting events and tournaments with other schools in the Witney Partnership such as football, hockey, tag rugby, cross country and athletics. We have won an array of trophies for netball, hockey and cricket.

At playtime and lunchtime, our play leaders and lunchtime supervisors are in the process of developing further enrichment of our children’s experience of PE by offering a variety of sporting opportunities and activities.

We have been awarded the Sainsbury’s Gold kite mark for our sports provision.

Swimming lessons take place on a rota basis for Year 2-6 pupils on Friday afternoons and we have an excellent track record of pupils achieving the government target of being able to swim 25m.

We believe strongly in eating healthily and offer a school fruit scheme. We ensure that “healthy living” is embedded in our curriculum enabling all children to learn to make healthy choices regarding diet and fitness and we also offer a residential trip in Y2 and again in Y6 with outdoor adventurous opportunities.

See the school Sports noticeboard and monthly newsletter for regular sports updates.

What is the Sports Premium?

The Government is providing funding of £150 million per annum for academic years 2014 – 2020 to improve provision of physical education (PE) and sport in primary schools. The sport funding can only be spent on sport and PE provision in schools. OFSTED will play a significant role in ensuring that schools target this funding in areas which will lead to clear outcomes in raising standards and opportunities in PE and school sport for all children throughout the Primary Phase.

At Aston and Cote we spend some of the money that we receive on joining the Witney schools PE and Sports Network. The remaining money is used to fund children attending after school sports events, the extension and broadening of opportunities such as the subsidy of archery and fencing lessons; specialist cricket coaching and professional development of teachers with the aim of developing outstanding PE lessons for all