What Jim told James (Conversations between an experienced Head of PE and and ECT)

Written by James Simms | May 7, 2025 4:00:00 PM

Foreword

This is a very worrying moment. I am about to start a blog with the words “I had a dream last night…” I have to be honest and admit that this would worry me as a reader. It would strike me as a bit of a 1980s Dallas storyline, but in this particular case, I’m going to let myself do it. I was watching TV last night (Sunday prior to a bank holiday Monday) and I dozed off. A documentary was narrating away on Prime about crime and the legal system. Some fella had done something horrible and then tried to represent himself in court. It was awful. Anyway, I drifted off and, as I came round, I had an idea in my mind. The idea was what the 48-year-old PE teacher I am (Jim) would tell the 22-year-old PE teacher I was (James) about classroom-PE teaching if it were possible to have such a conversation. My mind drifted across numerous things I have learned and numerous assumptions I have challenged and I wondered whether I would or wouldn't tell these things to my younger self. You see, this blog is not about what ECT PE teachers should or shouldn’t know. Rather, it is about whether an experienced teacher does a service or disservice to an ECT PE teacher by telling them the whole truth. Therefore, for each of the factors that I ponder, I am going to try and decide whether I would or wouldn’t say this to the ECT version of myself. That young person, James, is, presumably, under a lot of pressure and is trying to assimilate into the industry and my experienced self needs to make a call about what and when to share certain things.

Let’s give it a try...

The post

I had a dream last night… The experienced PE teacher I am, Jim, envisioned a conversation with the young, ECT PE teacher I was (NQT back then, of course) at the start of my career in 1999. In the dream, Jim had lots of things to share with the younger self, James, and Jim had to make a decision about whether it would be facilitating or inhibiting to tell James the things that he could tell him. This post is about those decisions. Should Jim tell James the whole truth?

Note: This post is specific to classroom- or qualification-based PE teaching. Whilst I have completed thousands of hours of core PE teaching, I am going to keep my observations specific to the teaching of GCSE PE, A-level PE, BTEC Sport, IB Sports, Exercise and Health Science, etc.

Subject knowledge

Jim: “James, there is nothing more important to your classroom-PE teaching than subject knowledge. It is essential you invest in this area of your development, and I will support you.”

James: “Agreed. Can you tell me what you consider subject knowledge to be?”

Jim: “Absolutely. When you teach a course, it is important that you do not simply 'teach to the spec’. Our minimum responsibility as classroom PE teachers is to teach to the broadest application of a course’s mark schemes and level descriptors and to incorporate all the applications and skills that go with that. You see, lots of teachers use a specification document as a teaching guide. This is a grave error. Specification documents are not fully inclusive of the assessed elements of a course. However, mark schemes, collectively, are!"

This is really important to how successful your students can be as a result of the experiences they gain in your lessons and their associated out-of-lesson time study. It is our ethical and practical duty to allow our students the possibility of achieving every point within a mark scheme. Many, many PE classrooms fall short of this, unfortunately, and it is an area in which you can mark your teaching out as better or high-quality in comparison.

Let’s take an example from OCR GCSE PE. The specification states the following for the long-term effects of training:

But the key factor here is being able to understand and apply these effects, including the use of data. Therefore, if we were to analyse every single mark scheme since 2018 for this section, we would find the following range of relevant material to teach:

If we extract this material from the mark schemes, we are able to produce a base requirement for our teaching as follows:

Understand the long-term effects of exercise on	General	Less likely to have disease
		Decreased chance of premature death
		Moderate intensity is best/low intensity is best
		Control amount of body fat
	Bone density	Increased bone density
		Stronger bone matrix
		Less brittle bones
		Decreased chance of osteoporosis
	Hypertrophy of muscle	Increase in muscle size/Increase in cross-sectional area
	Hypertrophy of muscle	Increase in strength
	Muscular strength	Increase in strength of muscle
		Increase in muscle tone
		Increase in power
		Stronger ligaments
		Increase in tendon strength
	Muscular endurance	Increase in muscular endurance
		Decrease in fatigue
		Go for longer
	Resistance to fatigue	Increased resistance to fatigue
		Increased rate of removal of lactic acid
		Increased tolerance to lactic acid
	Hypertrophy of the heart	Increased size of the heart
	Hypertrophy of the heart	The heart becomes stronger/stronger contractions
	Resting heart rate	Decreased resting heart rate
	Resting heart rate	Bradycardia
	Resting stroke volume	Increased resting stroke volume
	Cardiac output	Increase in maximum cardiac output
	Rate of recovery	Increased recovery rate
		Increased rate of removal of lactic acid
		Reduced recovery time
		Recovery will be longer if more lactic acid has built up/Lactic acid slows down recovery
	Aerobic capacity	Increased tolerance to lactic acid
		Delayed OBLA
		Higher anaerobic threshold
		Keep playing for longer/keep playing harder/more likely to last 90 minutes
	Respiratory muscles	Increased strength of respiratory muscles/Stronger diaphragm/Stronger intercostals
		Increased efficiency to take in oxygen
		Increased surface area of alveoli because more alveoli are reached
	Tidal volume during exercise	Increase in tidal volume/Increase in TV/Increase in resting tidal volume
	Minute volume during exercise	Increase in minute volume/Increase in VE
	Minute volume during exercise	Increase in maximum pulmonary ventilation/Increase in total amount of air into the lungs
	Capillarisation	Increase in the number of capillaries
		Capillarisation at the muscles
		Capillarisation at the heart
		Capillarisation at the lung/Increased capillary density around alveoli

And we also need to recognise that this is not the end of the story. We still need to be able to apply this understanding to a range of different contexts AND, where relevant, evaluate the concepts or analyse them using data.

Finally, as comprehensive as the list above may appear to you, we also need to recognise that this content requirement merely represents what has been required previously. We still need to be able to “teach for the future mark schemes” and to ensure that our learners have a knowledge base which is robust enough to be applied in unique ways in future exams.

Therefore, all in all, ‘teaching to the spec’ is simply not going to cause your students to be able to perform well in exams. For this reason, I state:

It is the core duty of a PE teacher to teach to the fullest breadth of a specification mark scheme as a minimum.

James, I also want to draw your attention to the word ‘minimum’ in the statement above. I want you to recognise that teaching to the depth and breadth that I am advocating for is not aspirational. Rather, it is the base requirement of teachers, and every PE teacher needs to achieve this. Otherwise, we are simply causing our students to lack the knowledge and skill base to access a mark scheme for our course.”

Conclusion 1

So, should Jim tell this to James? What do you think?

My answer is: DEFINITELY!

In fact, I believe it would be a serious omission not to share this with James.

But there is also another crucial point to make. This aspiration needs to be supported and resourced. It is the role of Jim (experienced) to support James (inexperienced) to achieve this aspiration, rather than setting a high bar and simply judging. Accountability will occur simply by the fact that students will be externally examined. Therefore, with this level of guaranteed accountability, there needs to be guaranteed support, and this is amongst the reasons why The EverLearner’s new 2025 PE Teacher Academy will include an entire section for PE teachers called Subject Knowledge. Watch this space! You can register your interest in this brand-new course here:

Differentiation

Jim: “James, you’re going to hear and read a lot of suggestions about differentiation over the course of your teaching career, and a lot of it is not reliable.”

James: “But making sure learning is relevant to different students is important, right?”

Jim: “It’s critical. In fact, it could be argued that it defines learning with a well-considered classroom.”

James: “So, what’s the issue from your perspective?”

Jim: “You are likely going to be guided toward differentiation by task or differentiation by outcome. When we differentiate by task, it tends to be by giving different-level tasks to different levels of students or by giving the option of different-level tasks. This is not reliable because it requires that you (as the teacher providing these tasks) know what the learning potential of each student is. You’ll never know this as a teacher. It’s true that you might have data that suggests a current performance standard for a student, but one can never, and I really mean never, know the learning potential of a student.”

James: “Wow, okay. So, no differentiation by task, then?”

Jim: “You can do it. You may even be encouraged to do it, but it’s important to realise that that differentiation by task is a sticking plaster. It is not a cure.”

James: “You mentioned differentiation by outcome, too. Does the same apply?”

Jim: “Exactly. No teacher can ever predict what a student’s outcomes will be when it comes to learning. Not accurately, at least. In the very worst examples I have seen, teachers, encouraged by the systems they are working within, differentiate by outcome based on centralised assessments such as SATS or Midyis or 11+ or other measures, some of which claim that they measure learning potential. They don’t! They are assessments of a moment, not of a person and their future.”

James: “Okay, so let’s say I don’t differentiate by task or by outcome, how do I differentiate?”

Jim: “In my opinion, the only truly educationally relevant ways to differentiate are by pace or repetition or by type of scaffolding. If we assume, for a moment, that teachers never truly know the learning potential of their students, then we have to reject differentiation by task and outcome. We also need to acknowledge that students, in general, will work towards high-level challenges if they have the right process to do so and the right support around them. This places great emphasis on differentiation by, firstly, pace or repetition and, secondly, by type of scaffolding.

So, let’s break these down:

Type	What is it?	Requirements	Regularity of my usage
By task	Providing a different activity for learners of different levels / experience / potential	Knowledge of a student’s current performance Knowledge of what a student has the potential to learn	Never
By outcome	Providing a different expected standard of outcome for different learners	Knowledge of a student’s current performance Knowledge of what a student has the potential to learn	Never
By pace and/or repetition	Providing a fixed standard of achievement and allowing different learners different lengths of time or number of repetitions to achieve it	Knowledge of a student’s current performance	Every lesson
By type of scaffolding	Providing different support structures to different students in order to meet a standard	Knowledge of a student’s current performance	Every lesson

This is what I believe and what my experiences tell me. What do you think?”

Conclusion 2

So, should Jim tell this to James? What do you think?

My answer is: PROBABLY!

Although I am hyper-confident in what is written above, I have to acknowledge that approaching classrooms and education this way will put the young James at odds with almost everything around him. Therefore, I would suggest that a character like Jim should take his time on this one and allow James to figure some things out for himself, as well as guiding him to the answers.

Classroom management

I am going to be so unpopular with this… Here goes…

James: “What approach do you take to classroom management, Jim?”

Jim: “I don’t.”

James: “What do you mean? A lot of what I have learned and a large section of the teacher standards are about classroom management.”

Jim: “That’s true. However, I approach things from a different perspective: If I create a world-class learning environment where the students in my care believe in what they are doing and experience the success that I am trying to provide them, classroom management will not be a factor in my classroom.”

James: “But isn’t that just rewording things?”

Jim: “You have a point. I may be playing with semantics here, but there is a serious reason why I say this. Classroom management should be about creating an environment of world-class, ongoing learning. What it has, unfortunately, become mixed in with is control, sanctions and rewards. Outside of the standard usages of three different types of reinforcement, learning classrooms rarely need this type of classroom management.

I’ll go further, James. Look out for colleagues in the coming years who 'sell you’ a message of command and control in your classroom. I can guarantee you that these colleagues, who may well be trying their best, have never operated in a world-class classroom. They have never felt the natural and organic “control” that occurs because students are truly learning deeply. Disciplinary structures, sanctions and rewards systems and “Classroom management” are, broadly, required because world-class learning is not occurring and control needs to be achieved instead.”

James: “But surely sometimes things go wrong and someone acts up and disrupts.”

Jim: “Absolutely, and you need to be ready for that, but I can promise you that the tendency for such things will be exceptionally low if and only if a world-class learning environment is in operation.

James, what I am telling you about here is aspirational and what, perhaps, you should be aiming for over the cycle of your career. It is normal that you will need systems to begin with. Definitely! I will personally support you within those systems, but I also want to ask you to raise your head high and know, for sure, that there is a truly reliable and sustainable way of achieving classroom management and that is to provide young people with the most exciting learning experience of their lives. We must aim for that.”

Conclusion 3

So, should Jim tell this to James? What do you think?

My answer is: I WOULDN’T!

Once again, I believe in what is written in this section, but I worry it would set James up to fail. This type of message needs to be displayed through behaviours and not words. Perhaps the way to do this is to show it and not say it. Perhaps this is my role in this case.

…and finally

I will leave this post here for today and, should readers be interested in this post, I will continue it with parts 2, 3, etc. I have enjoyed writing this post, although I wonder what readers will make of it. Am I being utopian? Maybe. But I have the right to write my thoughts too, and that’s what I’m doing. In my opinion, it is fair to express one’s experiences and knowledge if it has a sound base, and I am confident in what I have provided here.

Thanks for reading.

James

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