Benfield School qualify for national badminton finals for 9th year running.

Benfield School Qualify for National School Games 'Centre Parcs' Badminton Finals

Benfield Key Stage 3 Badminton team consisting of Sam Dinning, Paul Courtney, Ben Matthewson, Daniel Morton and Adam Scott maintained the schools unique record by securing a place in the Centre Parcs National Badminton Championship in May. This is the ninth year running at least one of the school teams has reached the final and on four of those occasions both age groups have progressed to that stage. The team came through the North Regional Final with flying colours.

In their first match against Durham Champions Wolsingham, the team recorded a comprehensive 5-0 win. They then went on to play Northumberland Champions Longridge Towers from Berwick in the semi final.

Sam Dinning narrowly lost to Longridge number 1 Hogg, 19-21 in a game which could have gone either way. In the Boys Doubles Ben Matthewson and Daniel Morton dominated the game winning 21-4. Paul Courtney then beat the second singles player Fawcus 21-15 to put Benfield 2-1 up. A place in the final was secured when in the mix and match doubles both pairs won easily 21-7 and 21-10 respectively.

The Final against Cleveland Champions Huntcliffe, proved to be worthy of the occasion.

In a fantastic top singles game, where both players demonstrated high levels of skill, Sam Dinning saw off Campbell. There were never more than two points between them during an intense battle. B  Sam held his nerve winning 21-20 to record what is probably the best win of his career so far. Ben Matthewson and Dan Morton then made short work of their doubles pair winning 21-11, another good win which put Benfield in control.

Paul Courtney played the second singles against Hill, and followed strict instructions with a display of all out attacking Badminton to win 21-17. His performance in this game was awesome to watch, and he was in shock as he realised the significance and magnitude of his performance as he left the court to be greeted by his dancing team mates.

The team goal then was to have a clean slate but this was not to be as Sam Dinning and Ben Matthewson narrowly missed out by one point in the doubles. Paul Courtney and Dan Morton maintained the high standard by winning 21-17 in another thrilling game between two very good sides.

What was also particularly pleasing was the conduct of the players throughout the event despite some challenging situations. The team now look forward to a trip to Centre Parcs for the National Final in May and amongst the best nine teams in the Country.

Margaret Perry

Benfield School

Newcastle School Games - Spring Term Update

Newcastle School Games - Spring Term Update

Service Level Agreements 

We now have 52 school signed up to our Service Level Agreement to help develop PE & School Sport and have agreed with the School Improvement Service to include our SLA as part of their services to schools. The SLA for next academic year accurately reflects the current services we provide to all Newcastle Schools and has been sectioned into three core areas 1) PE 2) School Sport 3) Professional Development.

Services to Schools

Newcastle School Games central funding has been extended up to 2016 to deliver 2 core services to Newcastle schools; Level 2 of Sainsbury’s School Games and the establishment of Change4life Sports Clubs.  The central funding currently supports the salaries of a Lead School Games Organiser and a Deputy School Games Organiser to work 3 days per week to deliver these 2 core programmes. The SLA’s developed with individual schools provide additional income to employ both above positions 5 days per week plus the addition of a term time only part time administrative officer.

After 1 year of delivering SLA services to schools Newcastle School Games now deliver an additional number of services which now fit into 6 bespoke services. 

1. Professional Development EYFS, KS1, KS2, KS3/4, NQT, Sport specific, SEND 

2. Sainsbury’s School Games Level 1, Level 2,Teacher Training, Sports Leader Workforce 

3. Sports Leadership Primary Play Makers, Leadership Academy, SSOC, ‘Move More’ sports leaders

4. Healthy Active Lifestyles Change4Life Sports Clubs, Events, C4L Celebration

5. PE & School Sport Network PE & School Sport Network meetings, PE Conference, Best Practice Twilights

6. Primary Sport Premium Ofsted ready evidence, Development Support, Reporting, Action Planning, Self-review & auditing

Sainsbury’s School Games

The Sainsbury’s School Games programme has continued to provide many competitive opportunities for the children of the city since the start of the new academic year. 

608 Secondary aged pupils have attended our Level 2 School Games (City Finals) events and represented their schools in a variety of sports.  The most popular, in terms of attendance, was the Yr7 & Yr8 Sportshall Athletics event that was held at the Centre for Sport and attracted 168 participants and provided a great atmosphere, especially whilst the track events were on.  The Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 Trampoline Competition was popular again with 119 pupils attending Excelsior to showcase their skills.  Our Badminton competitions have seen strong levels of registration and the number of schools represented has been extremely encouraging. 

By comparison a total of 693 Primary School pupils have attended the Level 2 competitions staged so far this year.  Much like the largest Secondary event, the strongest levels of registration were seen in the Yr5/6 Sportshall Athletics competition when 206 children participated in indoor track and field.  10 Schools attended the Netball High 5 event and the Quicksticks Hockey attracted 17 schools which illustrates a considerable increase in levels of participation in the latter

Professional Development & Teacher Training

We continue to work hard to provide a varied offer of professional development courses for teachers and make sure we negotiate a discount on all CPD for our SLA schools.

We have developed a targeted approach to professional development to make sure teachers receive the appropriate PE support and also a progressive pathway to support teachers towards outstanding PE.

Since December we have now coordinated more successful training opportunities for Newcastle teachers which were:-

1.        Getting your head around the new PE curriculum – 22 teachers attended

2.       First Step Dance – 16 teachers attended

3.       Learn to compete, compete learn – 13 teachers attended

4.      Primary NQT: Delivering high quality PE – 25 teachers attended

PE & School Sport Network

We continue to host our PE & School Sport Network on the penultimate week of each half term to discuss PE and share best practice, the last network meeting was based on sharing ideas for assessment for learning and some piratical ideas for developing team games using the Matalan resource.