I have just got back from the Conference for Heads of PE Departments in our secondary schools...

The Conference, organised by my colleague Helen Plimmer, was about 'Turning Good Practice into Common Practice'. Our challenge here in Leeds is to build BRILLIANT... brilliant learning in brilliant learning places... brilliant learners with brilliant teachers and coaches. We all know that at it's best provision in Leeds is fantastic and achieving wonderful outcomes. We simply need to help the rest become as good as the best.

We need everyone to be happy, healthy, safe and increasingly successful. All the evidence suggests that we need to increase three things... laughter, chocolate and exercise! Research suggests that those young people who do lots of sport do better across the board at school. Detailed studies have shown that young people engaging in the most intensive sporting activities do eight times better at GCSE!

We are achieving great results with the quest to get all young people engaged in 2 hours of high quality PE and Sport in the curriculum every week and another two hours outside school. But there is still a lot to do with older students, girls and young people from ethnic minority communities. The PE teams across the city are doing great things and changing lives and we must all learn from their passion, eenrgy, commitment and coaching expertise to help us drive up standards and build world class provision here in Leeds.
Chris