Ten predictions for classroom-based PE and Sport in 2025

Happy New Year!!

In early 2024, I wrote a blog post predicting what might happen in 2024 in relation to classroom-based PE teaching and learning - you can read this blog here: "Ten predictions for classroom-based PE in 2024". In response to that post, exactly 12 months later, I want to review my predictions and make 10 further ones for 2025.

My 2024 predictions were:

So, there you have it. I’m going to claim another 8/10 year when it comes to predictions. It’s true that some of my predictions have only partly been accurate but partly accurate –to me at least– is accurate enough for this environment. 

Predictions for 2025

Prediction 1: A review of GCSE and A-level PE will be announced (surely, this year!).

Prediction 2: Hot Topics will emerge as an important feature in PE and Sport student revision.

Prediction 3: Student numbers on the NCFE Technical Award in Health and Fitness will grow significantly.

Prediction 4: Subject-knowledge-based CPD will become the standard format of PE teacher CPD.

Prediction 5: Build-Peak-Maintain will be further established as a core educational practice in PE classrooms.

Prediction 6: IB Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences will become a blueprint for British-based PE and Sport qualifications.

Prediction 7: AI models will undermine current non-exam-conditions, written NEA models.

Prediction 8: PE sharing platforms will re-emerge as a reliable and value-driven offer to support PE teachers.

Prediction 9: The first-ever book written specifically about the discipline of classroom-based PE teaching will be published.

Prediction 10: January and June grade boundaries will continue to be a source of concern.

 Prediction 1: I repeat (from 2023 and 2024), a review of GCSE and A-level PE will be announced.

I have been suggesting this for a while now. With a Labour Government in place, it seems likely that a review of qualifications such as GCSE and A-level will be undertaken. These qualifications have been in place for first teaching in 2016 and first assessment in 2018. In other words, they are long in the tooth. If it weren’t for the Covid 19 mess, I believe that these qualifications would have been replaced already. Is 2025 the year that will see the qualification review announced formally? I think so. 

 Prediction 2: Hot Topics will emerge as an important feature in PE and Sport student revision.

I have recently written about Hot Topics for 2025. For all PE and Sport exams, I am fully analysing previous papers and SAMS and recommending that students overlearn ten Hot Topics per paper as part of their revision experiences. Here’s an example:

As you can see, we are analysing exams closely enough to identify 10 Hot Topics and, moreover, to link that topic to its relevant requirements and skill sets. All Hot Topics will be taught and modelled in our 2025 revision series. 

 Prediction 3: Student numbers on the NCFE Technical Award in Health and Fitness will grow significantly. 

Some of you won't know about the NCFE H&F course. It is a course offered at KS4 and can be awarded at level 1 or 2. It is an examination course with much of the content shared with typical topic areas on the GCSE PE courses. However, it is a technical qualification and a clear alternative to Cambridge Nationals and BTEC Tech at Levels 1 and 2. Given that student numbers on these better-known courses are decreasing, NCFE H&F is one of the winners. Whether this is a positive trend and student experiences will be better remains to be seen. Watch this space. 

 Prediction 4: Subject-knowledge-based CPD will become the standard format of PE teacher CPD.

I’m cheating here because this one is already occurring as mentioned earlier in this post. I truly believe that a major focus for PE CPD needs to be subject knowledge. Almost all of my in-school bookings now relate to subject knowledge training and I urge you to consider the impact of such experiences. 

I should also add that I am actively working towards a more complete offer relating to PE subject knowledge. Watch this space. 

 Prediction 5: Build-Peak-Maintain will be further established as a core educational practice in PE classrooms.

Please take a moment to read more deeply about Build-Peak-Maintain. The model is a wonderful one to really challenge the ways in which PE and Sport courses are structured, including the purpose of the assessment models. 

B-P-M is the way in which courses are structured to benefit from both the spacing effect and interleaved practice. Moreover, it honours the ways in which human beings remember or forget. Please take a moment to review these ideas. 

 Prediction 6: IB Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences will become a blueprint for British-based PE and Sport qualifications.

I have been writing about the new IB SEHS throughout 2024. I urge UK-based PE teachers to take a look at it. The course is the first-ever PE and Sport course that sits as a core science, in this case within the IB course profile. I am not arguing that PE courses should be core sciences in the UK. Our current courses would not be appropriate for that. However, the IB SEHS has been designed, from the base up, as a science course and I admire it greatly as a result. 

Given that I am predicting a GCSE and an A-level course review in 2025, I wonder if IB SEHS can be a major catalyst for the reimagining of our UK offer. 

 Prediction 7: AI models will further undermine current non-exam-conditions, written NEA assessments.

I don’t want to write this but I have to. The days of an assessed piece of coursework being written at home or in a classroom without invigilation conditions are over. As of now, AI is more than capable of writing the basis for a piece of written coursework for a student. Therefore, coursework models such as those used for GCSE PE courses, AQA and Edexcel A-level and numerous other sport courses are now no longer valid assessments of student performance. I want to be clear: this is the case NOW, not in the future. Coursework models that will survive this period include oral assessments (for example, the OCR A-level PE EAPI assessment) or those completed under extended exam conditions (such as the BTEC Sport and Exercise Sciences Unit 3 Sport Psychology paper). These are the future of NEAs in Sport and PE. Traditional, written coursework is, sadly, dead. 

 Prediction 8: PE Sharing platforms will re-emerge as a reliable and value-driven offer to support PE teachers.

2024 saw the death of two things: 
1. the UK’s most-shouted-about PE sharing platform;
2. trust in those who charge money for sharing platforms.

I am going to choose not to comment directly on people’s experience with a well-known sharing platform in 2024. As most of you already know, things ended very, very badly for one particular provider but, more, for their customers, many of whom lost chunks of money. Rather, I would like to focus on the future and what PE sharing platforms could and SHOULD be. 

I have a dream and it is this one: It is time for a sharing platform for PE teachers with this ambition:

To be the home of creative and supportive PE and Sport ideas and resources… FREE FOREVER!

You may be sensing that I know something that you don’t… correct! I do. This is an environment that I will be adding my time and experience to in the coming weeks and months. Watch this space!

 Prediction 9: The first-ever book written specifically about the discipline of classroom-based PE teaching will be published.

Oh, man! This one has got ridiculous. I write all the time! All the time! I have written more than enough for numerous books in 2024 but the writing, currently, has not been formatted in a book. I have actually started –and not finished– multiple books on PE teaching and I am promising myself that 2025 is the year. James, if not now, then when!?!?!?!

 Prediction 10:January and June grade boundaries will continue to be a source of concern. 

In recent years, the grade boundaries for exam sessions taken in January and May/June have been dramatically different. Many technical courses offer January exams and some centres enter their cohorts for these assessments. However, the total number of students sitting January and May/June exams is vastly different. Therefore, grade boundaries for January assessments have been volatile or, at least, very different to those taken in the summer. This is one of the reasons why student numbers of Cambridge Nationals and BTEC Tech Award are declining. As always, volatility and unpredictability in courses and, in this case, grade boundaries is a surefire way of undermining confidence and causing course popularity to decline. Exam boards, take note!

Conclusions