National School Sport Week is a huge celebration of everything that is great about PE and school sport, with all schools invited to take part and celebrate Physical Education. It started in 2008 and over 5,000 schools and 1.8 million pupils took part last year. This year's theme (Monday 25 - Friday 29 June 2018) celebrates the role of play and sport in education.

As in previous years, at Deer Park we involve local community clubs and coaches to help us run our National School Sport Week. The PE Faculty feel that it is important to encourage our pupils to do more sport in our local community. Once young people leave school, their levels of physical activity tend to fall and we want to encourage our pupils to continue sport in some form throughout their lives, whether team or individual sports, whether in a competitive capacity or as a social choice. In addition to the obvious physical benefits, people who are regularly active generally enjoy better mental wellbeing.

In National School Sport Week we offer our pupils the opportunity to experience different and exciting sports and physical activities that we do not normally teach in school, such as Judo, Archery, Table Tennis, Army Fitness, Zumba and Tae Kwon Do. Pupils have the chance to improve their mental, social and physical wellbeing as well as building key fitness components such as strength and endurance. Providing these new enriching opportunities enables our pupils to also develop key skills such as team work, resilience and respect.

Mrs Hacker, Head of PE Faculty, commented "The activities that the pupils undertook in this week were fantastic. They were re-energised and worked so hard. I was very proud of the team for putting together yet another fantastic sporting event for the pupils at Deer Park School."

It was good to see our pupils engaged in so many different physical activities. The army definitely put them through their paces! These opportunities in National School Sport Week reflect our teachers’ commitment to promoting participation and finding an enjoyable and personally challenging activity for everyone and they complement the full range of team games and individual sports that are offered within our PE curriculum.

Chiquita Henson, Headteacher