You, as a parent, can encourage your child to take up athletics. This is a wise choice that your child will no doubt thank you for later in life. The good news is that you don’t have to work too hard to find the right sports resources for your child. Most sports resources are available at your child’s school.
All schools are required to meet national curriculum standards for physical education, which naturally include athletics or elements of athletic sport for young children. Schools must develop competence to succeed in a wide range of physical activities. Some of these include the key sporting actions of running, throwing and jumping. It also covers a range of skills that support the development of a child’s sporting ability at key stages. These include balance, agility and coordination, and of course, competitive spirit and sportsmanship.
As your child progresses through their key educational stages, the level of sporting skills they learn builds on those they learn early on.
If your child has a particular interest in a sport (or demonstrates high skills), we recommend finding out what extracurricular athletics clubs are available at your child’s school. And if that still doesn’t meet your child’s sporting needs, there are also many athletics clubs in the local community (starting at the junior level) that your child can attend in their free time.
At school, you have probably already realized the value of teaching athletics. You know the importance of physical education for a child’s learning and development, it is a required topic through the national curriculum. However, there are some important factors that are sometimes overlooked that the role of athletics in schools can bring to your school and your students.