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The English Schools Football Association (ESFA) and Panini are once again running their Classroom Challenge competition for primary schools in England. This competition provides schools with the opportunity to have a bundle of Panini goodies delivered to their school, including worksheets and a 'design a football' competition. The feedback from schools regarding this opportunity over the last 2 years has been fantastic, especially when using the Panini goodies as a reward and a tool of recognition for hard work.

The Youth Sport Trust has started to run virtual after school sports clubs on a daily basis until the 18 December 2020. For any school that does not have an extra-curricular timetable at the moment, this could be a good way of engaging those children who normally attend extra-curricular and community sports clubs.

Over the last month or so a group of School Games Leads from the Cheshire, Warrington and Merseyside areas have been devising an electronic resource for schools to use to help in primary school recovery curriculums.

I am not sure whether people really want to remember early on this year where we were all in lockdown. However, cast your eyes back to April 2020, across the country the School Games network ran a national ‘Keepie Up’ event to engage as many people as possible in some sort of physical exercise. Well the network and in particular an ex colleague of Penny and I (Ali Watt) has pulled it out of the bag again and is looking at a Santa Dash activity that can be run in school.

For this academic year 2020 - 2021, the School Games Mark will once again be paused due to the COVID-19 situation. The School Games Mark Framework will take its place and be positioned as a self-review tool to support educational establishments reflect on their involvement in the national School Games programme.

Our annual CPD session for PE Leaders took place on Wednesday 11th November 2020. The training was kicked off with an inspiring keynote from Jodie Cunningham, Rugby League World Cup 2021 Women's Ambassador, entitled 'In the face of adversity'. This was followed by a summary of opportunities for the town of Warrington in the upcoming RLWC, presented by Jo Taylor (Project Lead for Warrington for the RLWC2021).

Two virtual network sessions were run during the week of Monday 5 to Friday 9 October 2020. Each session contained a variety of different messages and information that could be used by the Warrington primary school network. With over 30 schools attending the events, this was a great start to the year and the feedback so far has been very positive.

We have made all the information available to download from here.