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Don't be afraid - Making a career of teaching GCSE and A-level PE
Dear PE colleague,
This post is going to be a plea to you and your heart. This post is going to stress the importance of qualification-PE teaching for you and your career. This post is about how important GCSE and especially A-level PE are to our sector.
I consider myself one of the truly lucky people because of my career. I graduated as a PE teacher in 1999 and worked in four brilliant schools and colleges teaching PE to tens of thousands of kids. I also taught GCSE from day one of my first year of teaching, and A-level PE from day one of my second. I am truly blessed to have had those experiences and to find myself today in a situation where I get to teach GCSE and A-level PE every day as well as having founded a business that provides services in qualification PE, including GCSE and A-level PE.
For me, GCSE and A-level PE are amongst the most joyous constructs in the PE teacher experience. Now, years into my career, with robust subject knowledge in my back pocket, I can confidently tell you that I love this type of teaching and that, without it, my career would have been nowhere near as enjoyable. It is true that I got “lucky”. I worked in schools that held qualification PE to a very high value, and I spent 10 years working in a specialist sixth form college, where A-level PE and varsity sports coaching were, quite literally, the day job every single day of the week. Within those environments, I toiled and learned and improved and refined, and I enjoyed every second of it. I’m not sure I would change a single thing about my teaching career. True, this could be a classic case of rose-tinted glasses, but it is also how I feel.
So, why am I writing this post? Why the title, “Don’t be afraid…”? Well, I was meeting with an outstanding PGCE course lead in recent weeks, and this colleague (a colleague I am hoping to speak to a lot more in the coming months) shared some insights with me that I felt I wanted to comment on. The meeting was between this colleague, the course lead of the largest PGCE course in the UK, me and my colleague at The EverLearner, Elle Houghton, our Chief Operations Officer (COO). Elle had arranged a meeting because she felt that discussions around our PE Teacher Academy could be useful from the perspective of a PGCE course lead and, of course, for PGCE trainee PE teachers. It was a brilliant conversation. Our colleague at the university, who happened to, like me, have celebrated his 50th birthday recently, spoke with incredible passion and insight about PE teacher development, the PE sector as a whole and some of the challenges that trainee PE teachers face.
So, to summarise the attendees before we get into things, these people were chatting:
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Elle Houghton - Chief Operations Officer of the PE sector’s leading theory/qualification PE business
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James Simms - CEO and founder of the same leading PE business and the former Head of PE of, *to our knowledge, the world’s largest ever A-level PE cohorts.
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Colleague (whose name I am not including, as I haven’t asked for permission) - Head of Course for the largest PE PGCE course in the UK.
*I’m open to be challenged on this, but if you do challenge me, you need to beat 300 A-level PE students per cohort over ten years 😉
I want you to consider that our conversation was specific to theory/qualification PE and lasted about 90 minutes. And I want you to consider what the three of us might have discussed and what might have been shared about the state of play of PE theory teaching. What are your guesses of what came up?
We talked about the role of AI in trainee development. We talked about the challenges of being a PGCE mentor via Teams/Zoom/Meets and how different it was from the old way of continuous visits. We talked about the PE job market and about the challenge that PE trainees face in finding their first professional home. There were so many memorable elements of the conversations that this post could run incredibly long. However, there was one theme that struck me as needing to be aired and challenged via the blog. My colleague told me on two separate occasions:
“They’re afraid!”
My colleague told me that both PGCE trainees and their host (placement) schools are afraid when it comes to GCSE and A-level PE, and that this was a barrier to his work in preparing PE trainees. According to my colleague, both of these things are true:- PE trainees at PGCE level are afraid, on average, to teach GCSE and/or A-level PE and steer clear of it, meaning they may do likewise when they go into their first teaching roles after graduation.
- Host schools were afraid, on average, to challenge their PGCE trainees to teach GCSE and/or A-level PE whilst on placement within their PE departments.
The two points really got me thinking, and I did what I hadn’t done for a long time: I reflected, in detail, on what I actually did within my PGCE course.
My PGCE experiences
I completed my PGCE in 1998/99, and I completed three placements:- Placement 1: 10-weeks at Archway School, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
- Placement 2: 6-weeks at Marlwood School, Thornbury, Gloucestershire.
- Placement 3: 8-weeks at Archway School, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Placement 1: Approximately September 1998 to approximately December 1998 at Archway School, Stroud
I taught a lot of swimming at Archway. They had a pool, and I got to really love teaching on the poolside. I also taught tons of games and a little bit of gymnastics. In the classroom, I observed the amazing John Evans, my Learning Manager and a former Head of PE, teach GCSE and A-level PE. I believe that I taught some lesson elements for both courses. Those elements could probably be described as micro-teaching episodes but I remember teaching the A-level PE group about learning theories in skill acquisition. I don’t recall the details and I expect that my efforts were very primitive but I got to have a go. In GCSE PE, I remember working with a colleague whose name was, I believe, Mr Weir and he got me to help him format his practical PE lessons. I remember that he used a decentralised model so more students could spend more time on their assessed activities rather than generally working through units of lots of different sports. The point is, I was involved!Placement 2: Approximately January 1999 to approximately February 1999 at Marlwood School, Thornbury
This is where things really took off. My colleague at the school whose name I only remember as Richard gave me outright control of his A-level Sport Studies group for Year 12. Now, this sports studies course was different because it was 100% theoretical with no practical assessment at all. Richard backed me to teach the CV system unit of the course and my major memory of doing so, along with, presumably, loads of other experiences, was completing a practical heart dissection with the group. I have no idea why I chose to do it. I have no idea whether I did it well. I only remember my hand shaking as I looked down at the scalpel and I remember (sorry, vegetarians) the still slightly frozen texture of the inner cardiac muscle which hadn’t completely thawed from the biology prep room’s freezer. But I did it. And Richard gave me the opportunity to do it. That experience resonated with me and could probably be described as my first PE teaching risk (read more here).I believe that I also taught GCSE PE at Marlwood, but I can only remember a CPD session that my learning manager provided rather than the teaching itself. Believe it or not, it was an introductory session to using PowerPoint.
Placement 3: Approximately March 1999 to approximately June 1999 at Archway School, Stroud
I returned to Archway a more confident individual, and in my last placement, I continued teaching A-level PE to a different group of Year 12s. I even got to repeat my heart practical that I first tried at Marlwood. I was so cocky doing it the second time!By the end of the placement, I was, according to my colleagues at both placements, “a qualified PE teacher WITH DISTINCTION”. I was so proud of myself. I was, and still am, incredibly grateful for the support of both schools.
When I think about my placements on PGCE, I realise these things:
- Something drove me towards the theory side of the subject. I’m not sure what it was.
- My learning managers gave me the chance to teach large chunks of A-level and GCSE PE lessons. Presumably, they didn’t just do this with me but gave others the same opportunity.
- I took risks and aimed high with my theory teaching from the very start. Again, I don’t know why I did this. Maybe it’s my character. Maybe it was the context of confidence and opportunity that my colleagues provided me with. But I did it!
In my NQT year, I taught lots of GCSE PE, but I did not teach A-level at the very start. I recall visiting my Director of Sport and asking to teach A-level in the following academic year, my second. I don’t think I would have been pushy, but I would have been determined. That wish was granted, and I gave it a good go for the next two years when I was at that school. What made me go and make that demand to my DoS only 10 months into my career? What drove that?
If I read my career backwards, the person I am now needed that younger James to do those things. Is it a surprise that the 22-year-old pushing to teach A-level PE after taking big risks in theory PE teaching on PGCE placement went on to be a Head of PE at a massive sixth form college? Is it a surprise that the same NQT went on to start a theory PE business that is operational in over 1,200 secondary PE departments? One thing had to lead to another. I couldn’t be what I am now without the risk-taking PGCE trainee, and he couldn’t push as he did without the support of his colleagues around him.
And this is where I want to land this article. I want to make two statements to two different groups of educators:
- To PGCE or ECT PE teachers: You must, must, must push to teach GCSE and/or A-level PE as part of your development. There is nothing to be afraid of. If you are afraid, reach out to me, and I guarantee you support at zero cost. As you move into your PE teaching career, realise what assumptions you might be making about PE theory courses. If you have been afraid of GCSE and/or A-level, maybe you remain so. Maybe there are colleagues out there who genuinely see GCSE or A-level PE as “academic” or less relevant to their students. If anyone does believe this, they need to stop and think about what that idea is based upon. Is the assumption real?
- To PE teachers who host a trainee or have ECTs in their department: Give them a go. There is nothing to be afraid of. It is our collective duty to provide opportunities for colleagues to come up. Without it, where do we go in the future? Furthermore, do not be afraid of GCSE and/or A-level PE as an option in your department. Whether you are teaching in the most privileged or the most disadvantaged school in the country, I promise you that you can teach it and your students can learn it. Once again, if anyone wants more support with this, I am here, and I will lean in.
Conclusions
I feel passionately about what is contained in this article. I have written it because I care. I have written because I am sure about what I am writing. I have written it because I believe, fundamentally, that if you open the space for people, they will fill that space with success.I repeat what I wrote above: I am available to you to support your considerations and decisions about PE theory courses. I wonder if the risk that you need to take, based on reading this article, is simply whether to reach out to me or not. Do it! What is there to lose? I guarantee that I will listen/read and that I will answer you with my opinions.
Have a wonderful day.
James