United Sport
As part of our response to the London 2012 Olympic legacy, we have created the United Sport initiative.
Shaun Dowling is Head of Sport at United. Shaun’s background includes spells as a head of PE; a Director of PE and Sport in a specialist Sports College; deputy head in two secondary schools; and in a national role for YST. As such he is well-placed to support subject leaders across the group in both improving their PE and school sport provision and in using sport to drive school improvement. In his sports college role, Shaun also led a network of secondary and primary schools, leading training in PE and co-teaching lessons at KS2.
Schools in the group are divided into geographical clusters for PE/sport. These clusters meet in the autumn and spring terms to discuss their CPD needs and any intra-cluster sporting opportunities that their local networks are currently not providing. Activities have included cross-cluster moderations, learning walks, sporting competitions and sports tours to other schools in the group. In the summer term we hold our national conference for subject leaders.
In 2016 we launched our PE and Health Curriculum and Assessment Framework (PEHCAF). In doing so the group’s subject leaders decided on three main themes: performance (Fit to Perform), leadership (Fit to Lead) and health & well-being (Fit for Life), best summarised by this model:

State academies and independent schools have the flexibility to design their own programmes of study to fit their context and ethos within this framework, but as a group of schools we are united behind the underlying values and principles of this model. One of our national partners, Sports Leaders UK, have helped us to design the Fit to Lead strand so that it builds towards their qualifications in KS4.
In April 2017 the KS1 and KS2 PEHCAF was launched and is currently in the initial phases of implementation.