NEWS

Supporting schools and their pupils through lockdown and beyond

As the COVID-19 outbreak hit the UK and the nation went into lockdown school began to look a whole lot different: from homeschooling and online video lessons, to some schools staying open with reduced numbers to support the children of key workers.

But one thing that didn’t change with the announcement of lockdown was the value of exercise for children’s physical and mental wellbeing. In fact, it became more important than ever.

So, with initiatives, such as our traditional face-to-face delivery of the Merseyside School Games programme on ice, the MSP team rapidly got their heads together to look at what support we could offer for schools and their pupils in such unprecedented times.

Since March we’ve :

• Set up a dedicated web page with carefully hand-picked resources to support schools
• Transformed the Merseyside School Games into a virtual event
• Collaborated with Yorkshire Sport Foundation to offer more content via the #ThisIsPE initiative
• Got behind National School Sports Week to inspire schools and their pupils to stay active
• Started looking at how we can support schools as they reopen more fully in the new academic year

Find out more below…

Dedicated web page:
This was set up shortly after lockdown and updated regularly.
Schools received an email directing them to it, plus we also promoted it through Educate magazine and our social media accounts, to make sure as many schools as possible could benefit. The plan is for the page to remain available for the foreseeable future whilst schools continue to adapt to the changing conditions.
https://www.merseysidesport.com/covid-19-school-support/

Merseyside Virtual School Games:

The team understood how disappointed schools and pupils who had been working towards securing a place in the Merseyside School Games county final competitions must have felt at the news that the events couldn’t take place.

So our School Games Officer, Amy, along with the network of School Games Organisers and members of the MSP team, worked hard to pull together a virtual event.

Find out all about the event here.

Collaborating with fellow active partnership, Yorkshire Sport Foundation on their #ThisIsPE initiative:

At the beginning of lockdown there was a flurry of content being made available to support children to stay active, however it was evident that there was a gap in terms of true PE content available online.
Yorkshire Sport Foundation rallied to create resources that followed the PE objectives of the National Curriculum and asked other active partnerships who had a trained PE teacher on their staff to step in and create content too.

MSP was delighted to be able to provide the services of our The Daily Mile™ Local Coordinator, Grace, herself a trained PE teacher, to create some content. You can see Grace’s fantastic video below.

The suite of resources developed was endorsed by the Department for Education and supported by the Association for Physical Education and the Youth Sport Trust, demonstrating just how robust the content was.

You can see the whole range of #ThisIsPE videos created and commissioned by Yorkshire Sport Foundation over on YouTube.

Big thumbs up to our partners across the Pennines for initiating this project and for letting us get involved.

Backing the ‘Virtual National School Sports Week’

Sky Sports were leading a ‘Virtual National School Sports Week’ in association with Youth Sport Trust from the 20th-26th June and invited active partnerships across England, including MSP to get involved. Our team jumped straight on board to create some videos for social media that would inspire local schools and pupils to take part.

See Kyle, Amy and Grace in action:

The team are now busily looking at what they can offer to support schools as they head into the next academic year and look to handle the ongoing impact of the pandemic.