Catholic Social Teaching

How we address values and virtues through the Physical Education Curriculum

Catholic social teaching is concerned with global issues and the church’s stance is to tackle the issues an find ways to resolve them. There are a number of areas within the PE curriculum where students are exposed to theses issues and the Catholic view point can be discussed.

Human Dignity : The PE curriculum supports the value of human dignity by encouraging our students to be virtuous.  This is shows through compassion and respect towards opponents or teammates.  Students learn about the importance of forgiveness towards others and the value of sportsmanship. GCSE and A-level students explore themes regarding prejudice and deviance in sport. They learn about political exploitation of the modern Olympics and the impact of war and terrorism.  The injustices suffered by others is explored through the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the ‘Black Power’ demonstration in 1968 and the Munich 1972 Palestinian terror attack.

Peace : In PE, students have to control their emotions during adversity and thus develop temperance through participation in sport.   They learn to be gracious in victory and congratulate opponents in defeat.

The common Good: Through team sports such as Rugby, our students learn that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Although, the enhancement of individual skill is encouraged through our extra-curricular program.  This notion is explored further at A-level where students learn about group behaviour and team cohesion.  It is also vital that when our students leave school, they choose to participate in sport.  Our curriculum provides all students with the same opportunity to participate in the same activities and sports.  As they progress, greater choice is provided but students in all years wear the same PE kit and expectations are consistent throughout the department.

Dignity of work: At Ks4, students consider the impact of socio-economic status on participation in physical activity.  More specifically, they look at the impact of particular barriers that exist and encouraged to reflect on strategies to improve participation for individuals from a lower socio-economic background.

Solidarity: Participation in team sports fosters an understanding of how interdependent members of a team are. Students learn to accept the roles of captain, vice-captain, team players, coaches and volunteers.  This is further explored through Sport Education in Year 9.  Our Sports Leaders course encourages empathy by placing the students in the role of a coach or teacher.  Furthermore, Sports Day and our inter-form sports league encourages a collective responsibility through participation in sport.  Each half term, students in each tutor group participate in competitive participation in sport.  The squad in touch PE league is updated to reflect performance and with sports day, used to determine an overall winner.