What is the Sports Premium?
The government has provided funding of £150 million per annum since 2013 to provide new and substantial primary school sport funding, this funding has increased in 2017/18. The funding is being jointly provided by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport, and will see money going directly to primary school head teachers to spend on improving the quality of sport and Physical Activity (PA) for all their children. Each school will receive £16,000 plus an extra £10 per pupil each year for the next two years – here at Arkholme that will mean around £16,780 this year. The money can only be spent on sport and PA provision in schools.
Purpose of the funding
Schools will have to spend the sport funding on improving their provision of PA and sport, but they will have the freedom to choose how they do this.
Possible uses of the funding include:
- Hiring specialist teachers or qualified sports coaches to work alongside primary teachers when teaching PE
- Outdoor and adventurous activities
- Paying for professional development opportunities in PE/sport
- Providing cover to release primary teachers for professional development in PE/sport
- Running sport competitions, or increasing participation in school games
- Buying quality assured professional development modules or material for PE/sport
- Forest School Activities
- Subsidising outdoor pursuit residential activities
At Arkholme Church of England Primary School we recognise the contribution of PA to the health and well-being of the children. In addition, it is considered that an innovative and varied PA curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities have a positive influence on the concentration, attitude and academic achievement of all children.
The governors agree that the money must be used so that all children benefit regardless of their sporting ability. It’s important that we use this money wisely. We have bought into the Lancaster and Heysham School Sport Network which includes professional development courses; every teacher at Arkholme will take part in PA professional development courses, ensuring high quality PA provision continues. This partnership also enables our children to take part in competitive sports competitions with the potential to advance to county finals, this year we competed in the small schools sports hall county finals and small school county football finals. We are able to provide cover for teachers to take groups of children to sports competitions. All KS2 children compete in at least one inter school competition every year, most children compete in more than one inter school competition each year in KS2.
Since being in receipt of sports premium we have sent every teacher on PA CPD; provided all children with a range of different sports clubs – the up take for this has been high, trained a level 3 forest school leader, entered many sports competitions, organised and hosted football tournaments and bought some new PE equipment. The funding has impacted positively on both staff and pupils and we hope to improve this further by continuing to provide a wide range of opportunities for both our pupils and staff.
We will also use some of the money to collaborate with other Lune Valley Cluster Schools to organise and run Sports tournaments, hosted by each school throughout the year.
The funding has enabled us to enter all competitions provided by the Lancaster and Heysham School Sport Network. This year we will enter teams in the following competitions –
- Football
- Tag Rugby
- Cross Country
- Cricket
- Multiskills
- Sports Hall
- Athletics
We are part of the Carnforth Rural Sports Network. This provides more opportunities for staff development and training. This will allow teacher to be supported in improving the delivery of high quality PE. We will also be taking part in more competitions including handball which is a sport new to our school.
This year we have also achieved Platinum School Games Mark for the first time.
Links below show how we have spent out PE funding and the impact this has had.
2025 -2026 – Sports Premium spending plan last updated Nov 2025
2024 – 2025 Sports Spending spread sheet
2024 – 2025 Sports Premium Evidence and Impact
2023-2024 Sports Premium Evidence and Impact
2022 -2023 Sports Premium Funding evidence of impact
