Physical Education

The Physical Education department aims to provide students with the opportunity to experience a wide range of physical activities, and gain knowledge of sports, in an environment based on building students’ confidence in their own abilities.

The challenges in meeting the needs of students with a vision impairment include:

The absence or limitation of learning by observation
Overcoming students’ low confidence due to previous bad experiences or limitations put on them by others. Blind students have often been told “you can’t do that, you are blind”
Difficulties in spatial orientation and body awareness
Lack of incidental learning which is acquired by sight e.g. watching the Olympics or sport on TV

In addition to the teaching of core PE, the PE department provides a wide range of extracurricular opportunities. Regular extracurricular clubs leads on to taking part in external sporting tournaments.

Examples of these include:

Swimming Club and taking part in the BBS Swimming Gala and DSE National Swimming Championships
Goalball Club and taking part in regular tournaments in domestic league and potential Paralympic representation
Boccia club and taking part in School Games
Cricket and playing in the local VI Cricket team and playing against the MCC cricket team

Examples of adaptations for vision impaired students

High staff to student ratio in PE lessons.
At least two hours of PE a week – one of which is swimming.
Progressions of teaching, starting from a point of achievement to enable the student to learn with confidence.
Every student works to achieve their own target as they all start from a different stage and students are encouraged to appreciate that everyone in the class has their own targets. They are encouraged to do their best, not to be the best.
The highlighted use of developing muscle memory to overcome difficulties in spatial orientation.