Athletic Development Days are a fun way to measure pupil’s athletic abilities and introduce fun and engaging long term athletic development programmes (LTAD) to schools. 

As if this new partnership wasn’t exciting enough, as a 20th anniversary year offer, any school who works with Playforce in 2018 will be able to access one of these days free of charge*. During the day GCP coaches will deliver a range of challenges and fun sessions to the whole school, measure performance and hold a briefing session with school staff.

The sessions will enable schools to:

  • Measure the athletic abilities of pupils
  • Engage children of all abilities in fun fitness sessions
  • Build pupil’s confidence to try new activities and engage in a variety of sports
  • Highlight areas to include in schools’ health and wellbeing strategy
  • Help to identify where your PE and Sport Premium could be used for maximum impact
  • Provide a benchmark measurement from which to evidence improvement
  • Identify sporting talent

Founded in 2015 by Director Jake Keeling, GCP have established themselves as one of the UK’s leading sports performance companies. Having already agreed partnerships around the UK with a range of Universities, Colleges, Non-Elite Teams and more recently the Professional Footballers Association at St Georges Park, the opportunity to work in partnership with Playforce on the delivery of athletic development  days for their partner schools was something the company jumped at the chance to get involved with.

Jake said “Teaming up with Playforce is hugely exciting for us. We’ve been exploring the primary school market for the past 12 months by working with a select group of primary schools across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Our Physical Performance Coaches have been running specialist athletic development testing days where we were able to get some great data on the pupils by capturing their physical literacy scores. The days are great fun! Pupils and teachers really engaged with the challenges and assessments. Our coaches have also really enjoyed working with a broad range of children within schools we have been working with. Following the testing days our Coaches have then been delivering blocks of sessions from our long term athletic development syllabus within PE lessons and also running after school physical performance clubs for schools. This service is very different to the norm that is delivered in schools across the UK via traditional sports specific coaching companies and we feel very passionately that our programmes can really help pupils to improve their physical literacy, fundamental movement skills and overall health & athletiscm.

Emily Northin is Director of Marketing for Playforce, the UK’s leading supplier of outdoor play and sports facilities to schools and nurseries. 

Emily said, “We are thrilled to be working alongside GCP to offer this fantastic Athletic Development service to Playforce customers. As we celebrate our 20th anniversary this year, we wanted to offer our customers a little something extra to underline our commitment to provide children with the very best opportunities to get fit and active from an early age. Our partnership also allows us to provide a unique offer to schools across the UK, not only developing outstanding outdoor facilities for sport and play, but also providing the specialist guidance through GCP to make sure that pupils get the most sustainable impact from the school’s investment.”

Kevin Paxton, GCP Physical Performance Consultant worked with Playforce to help shape the partnership.

Kevin said “Shaping this programme with Playforce has been great. From the get go Playforce understood our point of difference from sports specific coaching companies that also work with schools. For us this was key as it also therefore meant they really saw it as a great opportunity to introduce a new type of programme into schools. At GCP we deliver fun, challenging and engaging long term athletic development programmes for children. The team at GCP are really looking forward to working with Playforce’s partner schools around the UK. Excitingly we are also going to be working with the team at Playforce to help design the next generation of equipment for schools. Our hopes are that through this partnership we can really help to have a great impact on the primary school children’s health & fitness around the UK.”

LAUNCHED TUESDAY 27TH FEBRUARY 2018. 

For more information please visit www.playforce.co.uk/gcp or call Playforce on 01225 792660.

*Special offer is subject to some terms and conditions, which can be seen at www.playforce.co.uk/gcp