The PE Teacher Academy - Where Are We After Two Months?

Dear colleagues,

It is early November and The PE Teacher Academy has been in place for two months. The PE Teacher Academy, amongst other things, could be described as my second life’s work. The concept is that PE teachers specifically can go to The Academy and learn just about anything to do with PE teaching.

To radically improve the PE achievements of all students and transform the PE-teaching sector into the best-trained and highest-performing classroom teaching network in the world."

This is a high-aspiration mission. Rather than trying to make the PE teaching sector “better” or “improved”, we are aiming for the PE teaching sector to be, literally, the best-trained and highest-performing network in the world. Wow. Imagine if that took place. Can you perceive how the world would be?

But I have another, more personal aim. I turn 50 years old in July 2026 (gifts welcomed!) and, to put it bluntly, I perceive that the early and middle parts of my career are behind me. But I also have a vast amount of knowledge in my mind about PE teaching, and I want to get it out. I have read, learned, practised, adjusted and experimented with so many models and concepts that I need to get these ideas and experiences out of me and share them with the sector and maybe, just maybe, leave the PE network in a better position than I found it in when I started my teaching career in 1999. The PE Teacher Academy, as you’ll read shortly, is a commercial product, but it is also my second life’s work, and I am determined to deliver it. 

So, with all that said, The PE Teacher Academy launched in September 2025. It is a space with over 30 PE-specific courses that PE teachers can study and (very soon) certificate on with a new course added once every seven days. 

So, where are we right now?

As of this moment in early November 2025, I am delighted to let you know that The Academy has been successfully taken up by the first tranche of early-adopter PE departments and has already proven a reliable commercial decision on the part of our business. This is significantly earlier than we expected. The PE Academy is already successful.

The MVP

Consider in your own work how common it is to make something perfect before you use it. Think about all the times you tweak a slideshow, worksheet, exam or teaching episode until it is “just-so”. In business, this really can’t fly. The PE Teacher Academy, for example, was launched in what we describe as an MVP version. MVP stands for…

…and allows businesses like ours to build products that have commercial relevance but do not take so long or so much money to build that they threaten the existence of the business or, in the future, become difficult to invest in further. In this framework, the MVP version of The Academy featured all of the following:

• Over 30 PE teacher courses
• PE-teacher specific tutorials
• PE-teacher specific checkpoint assessments
• Self-enrolment in courses
• Self-unenrolment from courses
• Repeating completed courses a second, third or fourth time
• PE teacher-specific success criteria for courses

• The further 250 or so courses we perceive as possible
• Course certification
• Ongoing record of achievement
• Teacher-learning specific dashboard
• Setting teacher-learning goals for other teachers
• Sharing one’s own learning with others, such as line managers
• Courses written and produced by external providers and hosted in The Academy
• In-person CPD
• Annual conference

Specifically because The Academy has started so strongly, we are now able to commence delivery of these post-MVP features. For example:

• Certification
• Ongoing record of achievement
• Teacher-learning specific dashboard

These will all become available during November 2025 because our early adopter PE departments have invested their (often scarce) financial resources into The Academy, we can reiterate our MVP and develop it into a post-MVP model. Moreover, our users can drive us forward with the path they wish us to take. Our post-MVP model is also “post-us”. It involves our users and their opinions and desires. The PE teachers themselves drive the product forward. 

Big decisions ahead

I have now, personally, had over 20 conversations with PE departments about whether one teacher should be able to compel another to learn something in The Academy. As things stand in our MVP model, PE teachers have complete independence in whether to learn about dual coding in PE or about questioning techniques in PE. It is utterly up to them. But we are also mindful that we are providing The Academy at the level of a whole PE department and, thus, that such PE departments will have team goals and intentions that they wish to collectively achieve. Therefore, we are pondering how a Head of PE, say, should be able to compel learning by their PE teams. It does not feel right to apply our assignment model from the student learning platform to PE teacher learning. Student assignments have high levels of compulsion and very specific deadlines. This does not feel appropriate for PE teachers.

So, rather than this, we are considering that we will provide these two options to PE departments:

This would allow PE departments the flexibility to encourage or even insist on certain experiences. But we remain unsure whether the recipient of a suggestion or requirement should have the right to reject the task. We would like our PE teacher community to help us decide this. 

Beyond the feature set of The Academy, we also need to decide on the next priorities with regard to content. What are the biggest learning priorities for PE teachers and what should we target next, next and next?

In recent months, PE teachers have told us that they would like support with Non-Examined Assessment (NEA) models on PE courses, and, therefore, my team and I are building these courses for the major qualifications. Not only will we point out the overlying structures of NEA, but we will set a standard about how different NEA models should be approached, delivered, and standardised within a centre. Our aim is to demystify the ongoing challenges of NEA and cause PE departments to approach practical and coursework assessment with confidence and certainty. Moreover, PE teachers, through our new certification model, will be able to prove to others, including school managers or potential employers, that they have experienced the relevant learning for them to be able to get their NEA provision “right first time”. 

A further big decision we have is how to commence our thinking about in-person CPD in the era of being able to “learn anything online” and that this anything is specifically and “bespokely” applied to PE teaching. What does in-person, PE CPD look like in 2026, 2030 and 2035? I am very confident that it should not be a model of PE teachers taking days off school to visit central London, say, at a cost of hundreds of pounds plus cover teacher costs to have a standardised set of slides delivered to them. Surely, this can’t be the case any longer. It is my belief that conceptual and applied learning will shift to the online space, including our PE Teacher Academy, and that in-person CPD will only include participatory learning such as classroom demonstrations, forums, teaching models, experimentation and collaboration. For our own part, we wish to couple our online PE Teacher Academy with a clear and obvious opportunity to be able to experience that which can be learned being done for real during in-person CPD experiences. I ask all readers to watch this space and, I hope, excitedly anticipate our announcement of our in-person CPD opportunities, including a national and international PE conference offer. Imagine a world where you (a PE teacher, presumably) can blend learning from The PE Teacher Academy with world-leading and in-person experiences that bring the concepts and applications to life. 

Final thoughts

So frequently, when I start a blog, I don’t have a certain idea of where it will lead. This particular post is a good example of exactly that. But I feel sure that what I have written here is aspirational, open and, without doubt, reflects what I am experiencing in my work right now. 

I believe there is value in asking your opinions on The Academy and, for this reason, I invite you to complete the form to share your vision about the directions that the PE Teacher Academy should take. I am particularly interested in your views on content development and the degree to which one PE teacher should be able to compel other PE teachers to learn certain courses. I guarantee that your opinions will be respected and valued. 

Thank you for reading.

James Simms