Being active, taking part and finding something you enjoy

At Captain Shaw's, PE, sport and physical activity are about much more than being good at sport. We want every child to be active, take part, develop confidence and discover physical activities they can enjoy.

The PE & Sport Premium is additional government funding provided to primary schools to improve PE, sport and physical activity. We use it to create opportunities that go beyond our core PE curriculum and to remove barriers that might otherwise prevent children from taking part.

Making the most of where we live

Being a small rural school shapes our approach.

We are fortunate to grow up surrounded by the lakes, rivers, coast and open countryside of Cumbria. This makes water confidence and practical water safety particularly important. Alongside our curriculum swimming, we provide additional opportunities for children to develop confidence and experience being active in different water environments.

During 2025/26, this included additional swimming and water-safety provision from Reception to Year 6 and a three-day open-water safety and aquatic confidence programme for Years 3–6, including canoeing and kayaking scrambling.

Our rural location can also make opportunities harder to reach. Swimming facilities, specialist activities and many sporting events involve considerable travel. We therefore use PE & Sport Premium to help remove this geographical barrier and give our children access to opportunities that might otherwise be difficult to provide.

Sport and physical activity for everyone

Inclusion is central to our approach.

We want children with different interests, abilities and needs to be able to participate meaningfully. Our whole-school summer sports competition, for example, used mixed-age teams and enabled every child to participate, including pupils with SEND.

We have also invested in new modular outdoor equipment to broaden active play. This is already helping children explore balancing, jumping, climbing and movement in different ways. It has had a particularly positive impact for some pupils with SEND and EHC plans and has encouraged our younger children to experience a much broader range of physical play.

Building confidence in the water

We are beginning to see the cumulative impact of sustained investment in swimming and water confidence. Staff are increasingly seeing children become comfortable and safer in water at an earlier age, allowing later provision to build upon skills and confidence already established.

At the end of 2025/26, 5 of our 6 Year 6 pupils (83%) could:

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently for at least 25 metres;
• use a range of strokes effectively; and
• perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

Our PE & Sport Premium reporting

Each year we review how the funding has been used, the difference it has made and how improvements can be sustained.

You can read our full 2025/26 PE & Sport Premium Evidence & Impact Report below.

The report explains our funding, provision and impact in greater detail, including our statutory swimming and water-safety information.