Pre-GCSE PE course coming your way!

Dear PE colleagues,

I am delighted to announce that, in the immediate term, my colleagues and I at The EverLearner Ltd will be launching the PE sector’s first-ever Pre-GCSE PE course. Our new course –a series of 16 short lessons with very extensive quizzing in practice, test and checkpoint mode – will be available to you no later than September 2025 and, we anticipate, a great deal sooner.

PE teachers have commonly reported to us that they need a reliable tool to use to introduce their prospective students to GCSE PE study without causing massive amounts of work for the department in question. Furthermore, teachers have recognised that the challenge and rigour of GCSE PE arrives at the feet of new GCSE PE cohorts too bluntly in Year 9 or Year 10 and that a better build up of knowledge and skills would be helpful.

We have spent time restudying the constructs of all the major GCSE PE courses, as well as the more minor courses, and we have identified 16 areas that we believe students would benefit from prior to commencing a full GCSE PE study.

100% of our course content is designed to be taught and learned through practical experiences, and we will be publishing guidance about this in the near future. 

For now, consider, for example, how our planes and axes lesson could combine beautifully with practical lessons in gymnastics or trampolining and how our intro to the respiratory system lesson could combine beautifully with lessons in athletics or swimming. 

Our course outline is:

The content, knowledge and skills expressed in this curriculum are exam-board agnostic. Therefore, the study of this material and the learning that comes with it are relevant to all potential students of GCSE PE. Furthermore, 100% of the course above is taught with the accuracy and rigour that would be expected of a GCSE course, whether in PE, science, psychology, sociology, maths or any of the sciences. Who knows, maybe by studying our pre-GCSE PE course, your students will become better students of both GCSE PE and GCSE chemistry, say.


Here are some FAQs that you should be aware of regarding the course:

A: No! All of the lessons of this course are bespoke to this level of study. 

A: None of them. Our teaching and examining are exam-board agnostic. So, for example, the components of fitness lesson does not rely on lots of wordy definitions of each component. Rather, we are trying to develop the students’ capacity to apply components to different examples of movement. Yes, we will refer to agility as including a change of direction, but, more importantly, we will ensure that students know why agility is so much more important for a games player than a sprinter, say. 

A: Quizzes are available in three different tiers:
Practice mode: No timer and the student scores are not recorded for the teacher to inspect. Although the time spent is. Student feedback on every question. 
Test mode: Time limit per quiz question and students' scores are recorded and reported to the teacher(s). Tests can be single-lesson or multi-lesson. Student feedback on every question. 
Checkpoint mode: Time limit for the entire checkpoint, with student feedback and their performance being retained until the completion of the checkpoint. Checkpoints are always multi-lesson and can be viewed as a type of summative assessment. 

A: Student tutorial viewing is measured objectively by the milliseconds. Furthermore, if the student does any of the following, the video will stop:
- Switch to another tab.
- Switch to another window.
- Leave their device unattended. We measure this through device interaction NOT their camera.
Therefore, if they watch the tutorial, you will know and can reward them. If they don’t watch the tutorial, you will know and can sanction them. We call this “the principle of zero-wriggle-room”.

A: Yes! You can set assignments for entire cohorts, classes, groups or individual students. You have total flexibility. You can assign students to watch, to test and to checkpoint.

A: This is the best bit! Literally zero. Whether your students simply self-pace their learning on the platform or you compel them to learn using assignments, 100% of the marking, tracking and recording is done for you. Furthermore, the students get individualised feedback in an instant. This applies to the use of the lessons, which are educationally tracked and reported, as well as all the quizzing. We simply invite you to review the results and take action as appropriate. 

A: We estimate that it will take the average student approximately 10 hours to complete the entire course, covering all tutorials, quizzing and checkpoints. As noted previously, all quizzing is repeatable as are the videos, but, on average, students will study in the region of 10 hours in order to “complete it”. 

A: No. You should expect to spend about ten minutes creating your users and groups if you are currently not a user of the platform. If you are a current user, this time will be far less. 

A: Yes. You can apply 50% or 25% extra time to any student you wish, and this is a site-wide setting. You can toggle to 25% and then let the platform do the remembering and the work for you. 

A: Current PE customers to the site will receive access to the Pre-GCSE course at no extra cost because it is part of their PE curriculum subscription. A customer would only potentially pay more if they are at the upper limit of their student numbers and wanted to enrol large additional numbers. In most cases, there will be no additional cost at all.
Non-customers need to acquire a subscription to the platform. We encourage you to enquire with us about our free 28-day trials and also consider having one of our PE team demonstrate the courses to you on a video call. 

A: Learning can commence, at the latest, from September 2025. However, we anticipate launching the course well in advance of the summer holidays. Sign up for updates. 

A: There are lots of different usage cases for the course, but we are going to initially recommend five different models:
1. Use the course to increase the interest your Year 8 or 9 students have in studying GCSE PE. If your students experience the quality of our course, the convenience of learning, the fact that they have a world-class platform to help them study, they will definitely be more likely to choose GCSE PE as an option. This Pre-GCSE PE course is DEFINITELY capable of supporting your recruitment drive for your course.

2. Use the course to introduce prospective GCSE PE students to the rigours of GCSE PE study. Using the checkpoints, time studying or live test scores, you can establish compelling targets that Pre-GCSE PE students need to achieve in order to access your course. This might help you determine which students are well suited to GCSE study or other PE and sport studies at KS4.

3. In line with cases 1 and 2, use the Pre-GCSE PE course with the entirety of your KS3 cohorts. For example, you may wish for all Year 8s or all your Year 9s, say, to study the course alongside their core PE experiences. This will enrich your KS3 offer, provide an opportunity for alternative assessments and, crucially, to "identify talent” in the ways that case 1 and 2 suggest.

4. Similar to case 3, you can use the Pre-GCSE PE course as a success criteria for KS3 PE study. Whilst we do not endorse any teacher switching KS3, core PE, practical teaching and assessment outright with our course, you can use the course to enrich your KS3 offer. Specifically, studying the Pre-GCSE PE course will enable some students to experience far more success in PE than, perhaps, they anticipate.

5. Use the Pre-GCSE PE course as a between-lesson learning opportunity for KS3 students. Some PE teachers might call this a homework strategy for KS3 PE, but my personal take on this is that PE students have as much right to learn about PE between lessons as maths students. If the aim of this study is to increase self-awareness and to stimulate greater net levels of physical activity, this method is definitely ethical and, done well, is deeply educational. Our recommendation would be to structure your KS3 offer similar to:

a. Year 7s study TheEverLearner.com course “Diet, Nutrition and Digestion: A Guide to Healthy Eating and Drinking” alongside the core PE experiences.
b. Year 8s study TheEverLearner.com course “Knowing Your Body Part 1 - Body Systems and Health” and maybe “Knowing Your Body Part 2 - Body Systems and Exercise” alongside the core PE experiences.
c. Year 9s study TheEverLearner.com course “Pre-GCSE PE” alongside the core PE experiences.

It goes without saying that PE teachers can adapt this model to suit their own school in whatever way they wish.