Sports Leaders in Primary Schools

Students in Year 10 have the opportunity each year to take part in the Sports Leadership programme. The level 1 qualification is designed to use sport and physical activity to help young people develop and hone their leadership skills whilst helping themselves and others stay physically active.

Young people undertaking a qualification in Sports Leadership will learn and demonstrate important life skills such as effective communication and organisation whilst learning to lead basic physical activities to younger people, their peers or within the community.

At Northgate the qualification allows our students to go out into local Primary Schools to lead sessions and in particular in the summer term when they have their sports days. We have over 75 Year 10s taking part in the programme this year.

Rose is one of the students taking part in the programme. She tells us more about the experience here:

‘From the beginning of the school year, a number of Northgate’s Year 10 students were selected to become Sports Leaders. This course included gaining a certificate and qualification in Leadership as well as experience managing sporting events, and even being invited to the annual Northgate Sports Awards. This meant that the Sports Awards opened their doors to more students than in previous years – with the possibility of winning the new ‘Best in Leadership’ award.

Many opportunities were given to the students recently to demonstrate this leadership skills, by taking trips to local schools and events. Throughout June, many Leaders travelled to Cricket tournaments, and sports days at schools including Toftwood Juniors, Toftwood Infants, Beeston, Kings Park, Grove House, Thomas Bullock and more, to aid young people with their activities. Some, being half days and others being full days, were often described as ‘fun’ and ‘a new experience’ that not only would help with achieving the leadership qualification, but also in deciding whether working around children would be something to proceed with in higher education.

Leaders had to supervise and instruct younger students while using the training prior to the trips to allow for excitement and adaptability of activities. As attitudes and skills had to be put into place, such as ‘communication’, ‘motivation’ and ‘fairness’, for some, it was the first hands-on experience to use the knowledge acquired from the course. This practical use of skills made the trips overall very rewarding for the students.

Laila commented, “I thought the leadership trips were a great opportunity to further my skills and knowledge on this course. I enjoyed these trips as I got to experience working with children, which is a route I want to go down after high school. It is great for our year to be able to work with the younger schools as we don’t have these opportunities very often.”

Lucy added, “One of my most memorable moments of going to Toftwood Infants is when I bonded with the children. A little girl I’d only spent five minutes with held my hand and asked me to walk her back into her classroom, which really made me feel the whole, exhaustingly hot day had been worth it.”

Joe, winner of the ‘Best in Leadership’ Award at the Sports Awards remarked, “It was a good experience to help the teachers, parents and children with running the events smoothly,”

Thank you to the PE department for putting on Sports Leader programme and giving the Year 10s some unique opportunities to develop their leadership skills.’

A real insight into the Sports Leader programme, thank you to Rose for giving us an insight. We hope many more students will take up this opportunity next year.