Is PE in crisis? with Lee Sullivan

After successes in our weekly blog posts on “Teaching Planes” and “Teaching Levers” in recent weeks, on Friday 12th November as the sun came down on another week, I sat and spoke with Lee Sullivan for an hour via Zoom in order to provide the podcast episode below. 

Lee is a Head of PE at Upton Court Grammar School in Slough. A few years ago, Lee was on the verge of leaving the PE teaching sector and was experiencing real frustration with his role and, specifically, with the feeling that what he had entered the profession for was not the impact he was actually achieving. Over the lockdown periods of 2020 and 2021, Lee took to reading and researching concepts such as physical literacy, the concept curriculum, assessment rubrics and the importance of learner voice.

Lee and I spoke for an hour and we tried to address the following question: Is PE in crisis? Amongst other things, Lee spoke with deep passion about the concept curriculum and his realisation that sport was the vehicle to learning crucial life skills rather than sport being the actual destination of his department and his students’ experiences. We discussed assessment rubrics and how assessment can be used formatively to inform summative assessments and we talked about pedagogy.

Lee’s message is a crucial one and needs to be heard and read by all PE professionals as well as senior education leaders.

Lee’s book Is PE in Crisis: Leading Meaningful Change in Physical Education can be purchased from Amazon and is available in paperback and Kindle versions. 

We urge all PE teachers to purchase and read the book but also to give some time to listen to Lee’s opinions in the podcast above. 

Please leave your comments and questions below.