The Truth About Primary PE in NSW: PDHPE Explained

Have you ever walked out to the oval on a Wednesday, looked at your class and thought "I honestly do not know if I am teaching this properly"?

If so, you are in good company. And I want to be really clear with you. You are not the problem.

I am a high school PDHPE teacher and I love PE. I love what it stands for. But I had this bubbling gut feeling that something was off with primary PE in NSW. So I spent a whole morning, five hours, digging into the history. What I found lit a fire in me that I have not felt in a long time.

Here is what I uncovered.

Primary PE has never really known what it is

The history of PE in Australia goes back to the early 1900s. Gymnastics. National fitness. Marching around a field. Skills. Games. Over 150 years the focus has shifted again and again.

And for the last 30 or 40 years, sport became the thing.

Sport captured our country and a lot of us grew up believing PE and sport are the same thing. They are not. When a subject does not know itself, it becomes vulnerable. People are not sure of its place. And that is a big part of why primary PE has such a bad reputation in NSW.

Fundamental Movement Skills have come and gone

In 1992 PE was declared a crisis across Australia. A Senate inquiry followed.

For a long stretch in the 90s there was no firm PE syllabus for teachers to follow. So teachers who loved movement taught it beautifully. And teachers who did not feel confident? PE quietly disappeared from their week.

It was not until 1999 that we got a firm K-6 PDHPE syllabus, with Fundamental Movement Skills taught explicitly. The Get Skilled Get Active document broke those skills down clearly. Locomotor, non-locomotor, object control. It was gold.

Then the skills got lost again

In 2018 the syllabus was reworked into a continuum from Early Stage 1 to Stage 5. Good intentions. But in the process, Fundamental Movement Skills stopped being explicit. The syllabus talked about running, movement and physical activity, but it did not spell out the skills.

So for around six years, many primary teachers have been a bit lost. We revert to what we know, and for most of us that is sport, because that is what our own teachers showed us.

This is a confidence gap and a resource gap

So many teachers have said the same thing to me. "I know how to teach phonics. I know how to teach my kids their times tables. But I do not know how to teach them to move their body."

That is completely okay. This is not a you problem. It is a system that never gave you the tools.

Here is the good news. Fundamental Movement Skills are explicit again in the new 2024 K-6 PDHPE syllabus, ready to teach next year. We have six months to prepare. And you do not have to do it alone.

A quick word on fitness testing

If you are still weighing students, still running fitness tests, still comparing kids against each other, it is time to let that go. Our kids do not deserve to be measured against each other with outdated techniques. PE should build a love of movement for every child, not just the sporty ones.

Where to from here

We are a nation of sport lovers. But we are also a nation of sport watchers. I want to change that. And I think it starts with you.

If you are a primary teacher or primary PE specialist in NSW and you want resources, cue cards, activities and ideas to teach Fundamental Movement Skills explicitly, head to thelearnnet.com/primary

Outside NSW? We have you covered too at thelearnnet.com/pe

You can listen to the full episode at thelearnnet.com/181

Let's step up our game in primary PE together. You are not alone.