St Matthew’s Primary School became the first school in Tunbridge Wells to run a Primary Sports Leaders Course. The newly trained Year 6 pupils are now running lunchtime sports activities for younger children at the school.

Over the past few years the Tunbridge Wells School Sports Partnership has been running successful leaders courses in secondary schools throughout the Tunbridge Wells Area. Both the Junior Sports Leader Award and the Community Leaders Award have proved to be beneficial to both the successful candidates and the schools that they have been working in. Leaders have supported sporting events, such as sports days, in their own schools and have also supported partnership events such as the primary hockey, football and netball festivals.

The benefits are obvious. Sports Leaders from Angley School have clocked up over two thousand hours of voluntary work in sport over the previous three years with some now seriously considering entering the teaching profession.

The Primary Sports Leaders Award started as a simplified version of this scheme and has developed to the extent whereby Sports Leaders UK has produced course material specifically aimed at Year 6 children.
The Young Leader Award is a programme of leadership training for young people between the ages of 9 and 13 that promotes them working with younger children, teaching leadership skills through a range of games and activities.

Year 6 children at St Matthew’s were asked to apply for the course outlining why they wanted to become a sports leader. From those applications twelve candidates were selected to take part on the course.
Leadership training ran for ten weeks during school lunchtimes. At first the children were asked who they thought made good leaders and why, and what skills they thought that a good leader possessed. They were then taught how to communicate effectively through projecting their voice and using a whistle. They were also taught methods to ensure that they had the attention of the whole group while speaking and to ask questions to ensure that children had understood what had been explained to them. The children were then shown how to use space effectively and how to organise simple activities. This was done through the medium of games. Each candidate organised the rest of the group, explained the rules of their game and then supervised while the activity was taking place. Their performance was then reviewed with their strengths and weaknesses being identified as well as suggested solutions to any problems that they may have encountered.

This proved to be the part of the course that the children enjoyed the most, their confidence growing with every activity that they organised. As a culmination to this preparatory work younger students were invited to attend workshops organised by the prospective leaders. Activities ranged from hockey through to netball and included a warm up, a focus on skills as well as a game to finish off with.
This proved to be highly successful and demonstrated that the children were ready to become Primary Sports Leaders.
A presentation was made during a school assembly by the School Sports Coordinator and every successful candidate received a special certificate and a cap to identify them as Sports Leaders.

The Primary Sports Leaders are now running sports activities during lunchtimes at the school.

Tim Luck
Tunbridge Wells School Sports Coordinator