The Six Outcome PE and Games Programme

Lots of educational planning focuses on “outcomes”.  Desirable changes that result from programmes of planned experiences.  Given the time and effort that goes into such planning, from the National Curriculum to individual school syllabuses, it is perhaps disappointing that the range of aspiration is so limited.

Typically, the dominant ambition is skill development.  Laudible though this is, this is only a limited part of the potential impact of physical activity and games.  Neither is it often at the top of the list of things that research suggests that children value about the subject.  Knowledge is another ambition, but frequently limited to cognitive abilities of the sort that can be tested and measured.  Rarely the self knowledge that comes from understanding the temptation to stop in the face of physical discomfort and the satisfaction that comes from persisting.  Nor the apparently contradictory joy of exhausting effort.

Planned outcomes are the defining feature of a programme of experiences. Without them, activity is aimless and any impacts are an accident.

Maybe schools are insufficiently ambitious in the range of outcomes they seek, and unduly restricted by things that can be objectively measured.  So, what might widen this ambition?

Below is a Six Outcome Programme.  It hopes to suggest the enormous potential of physical activity to deliver the widest range of developments.  These include physical capacities, skill acquisition and technical mastery.  But, perhaps more significantly, extend to vital personal qualities in addition.  These are truly universal benefits, available to all pupils, regardless of relative age, size or rate of skill adoption.  Only through a wider focus might physical activity have something to offer to all