CCCU Foundation Degree Physical Education and Physical Activity Students host the Kent School Games. #KentSchoolGames

On Tuesday the 25^th June 2019, over 650 children from 50 different schools within Kent joined us today at our CCCU facilities at Polo Farm to celebrate the diversity of the Kent School Sport Games.  The Kent School games finals of Cricket; Panathlon; Active Health; Tri-golf (led by the degree students) and Disability Football (led by the degree students).  The day started with Jack Green providing the children with an inspirational talk before they started their events.

Bronwyn Toms a student on the Foundation Degree reports on set up and impact of students leading the disability football finals from today.

Bronwyn is a student on the Physical Education and Physical Activity course at Canterbury Christ Church University and is nearing the end of her second year and completion of the foundation degree. The current module in which the Kent Sport Games features is within is the ‘Inclusion and Adapted Physical Activities’ module and she reports that running the Disability Football “is such a great opportunity for us and expanded our knowledge of the ways of football could be adapted for all children”. Bronwyn is planning on continuing onto the top up BA hons in Physical Education and Physical Activity course and plans to complete a 4^th year to complete her teaching qualification.  Completing this route has enabled her to work and study at the same time, allowing her to develop and complete her degree.

For the disability football final school games, Bronwyn’s year 2 Physical Education and Physical Activity group oversaw the organisation the of the event with assistance of the Football Association. They had to create suitable rules and the way the pitches were going to be constructed. The venue was full of hot, excited children all eager to get going. Even though there were numerous activities going on within the disability football programme, Bronwyn identifies the importance of allowing the children to mix with everyone and other schools as it “was very inspirational to watch the children with disabilities mix with others and come out of their comfort zone, the way they behaved towards each other and the sportsmanship they showed was just delightful and heart warming to see”. “It was so important that everyone felt included and part of the team, and I felt it was very successful and that we were able to apply the theory we had learnt in our module to our large practical event”.

Browyn continues and states that she believes that “we had a significant impact on the children. This is because one of our core aims was not focusing on the winning- getting the medal at the end, but promoting teamwork, inclusion and enjoyment.” The children after they finished their last game reported into Browyn that “she had loved the day because I have been able to play with my friends and meet other people like me.” This shows how important events like these are, that are supported and facilitated by our CCCU students as children may not have met other children with their disability before and meeting them through a sport or something they love may just give them a push in the right direction to become more sociably open and participate in life long physical activity.

Browyn would like to thank the university tutors for their patience and trusting us with such a big task, Lauren from the FA for all the guidance and dealing with our endless questions, and the children, for being creative, passionate and engaged. It was a very successful and special day.

For more information about the foundation degree, please contact: physical.education@canterbury.ac.uk