About – Inspired Schools
At Inspired Schools we are passionate to make a difference in young people’s lives, we want to create more active, healthier and happier schools.
Our vision is to impact schools across the United Kingdom, reducing childhood obesity by getting children and families active. We want to help children to engage more with their learning, through incorporating our products, projects and training throughout the schools, we know that increasing physical activity through coaching in primary schools can improve attainment, attendance and behaviour.
Ben Kirk, Co-founder and Director
Ben was a former secondary school’s PE teacher, but his journey to becoming the co-founder of Inspired Schools started when he founded another business, Key Stage Coaching.
Key Stage Coaching (now Inspired Schools) still operates in Somerset, providing outstanding PE lessons to Primary Schools and this was the springboard to the creation of Inspired Playgrounds.
When entering back into the world of Primary School PE, some 8 years after leaving a role for the local sports partnership to go travelling. Ben and Marcus Holmes, observed significant changes in teacher’s workloads and the physical literacy and activity levels of the children.
This sparked the need to come up with something innovative, which could make a real difference to the lives of the children at Primary Schools. What started as a way to get children more physically active during the school day has grown to improving behaviour, helping children to engage more with their learning, giving teachers time back, developing sports leaders that schools are proud of and that play an active role in the school, and of course still raising physical activity levels as there are such huge benefits of doing so.
The vision and mission has grown to impact school in every area of the UK. Possibly even beyond…
- Ben is also a governor at Northgate Primary School
- Author
- Podcast host
Marcus Holmes, Co-founder And Director
Marcus is an individual with 20 years of experience of working within Education, Sporting Governing bodies and Community Inclusion Projects. As a Sports Project Manager for Somerset Rural Youth Project and Senior Development Coach for Somerset Activity & Sports Partnership, Marcus has always achieved success in developing innovative projects to engage and inspire difficult to reach groups and individuals.
Moving into a football development role has seen Marcus play a key part in growing the game and increasing the participation levels within Somerset. Marcus has experience of being a Coach Mentor for the F.A., imparting his knowledge and supporting the next generation of Coaches.
A firm belief of ‘every single child can enjoy being active’ and ‘every child should be given the chance to fall in love with P.E, and Sport’ are the cornerstones of Marcus’ ongoing motivation and desire to implement new projects and ‘make a difference’.
Healthy Children = Happier Schools
Our Inspired Playground at Woolavington Village Primary School has been in place since the beginning of this school year and is already a great asset to our school. The staff are so impressed with the children’s leadership skills following their training and how simple the App is to use. Children have commented that the playground is great because there’s always something for them to do and it’s keeping them active. They have requested another 4 square already as it’s so popular! I can’t recommend this company highly enough – thank you!
St Joseph’s Primary School installed Inspired Playgrounds in September 2017. Once the stations were down we were able to train our Sports Leaders on how to use the stations and how to adapt the activity that could be carried out. After the leaders had been trained, they were able to run sessions for the rest of the school pupils and teachers.
Throughout the year, we have held many parent and child workouts before school, the stations have been used during many intra school festivals and many teachers have used the stations as a ‘release’ between lessons in the afternoon along with general use at break times and lunchtimes. We have also set up a weekly challenge that incorporates one of the stations where children can earn 20 extra house points for their house. The stations are a great resource as they do not need any setting up time, the children are able to work at their own level of ability and can be adapted to incorporate equipment if they would like to.
I would highly recommend the stations as an instant, fun resource in the aim of getting children more active and achieving their 60 minutes of activity a day. We are looking forward to setting up many more school competitions and activities that involve the lines in the next academic year.
We have been using Inspired Playgrounds for a year and it has had a massive impact on the activity levels in our school. Our Playground Leaders track activity using the markings, with the app, and award pupils in celebration assembly with trophies, house points or an extra playtime. They then display winners on their board in the hall (see below). The app also allows us to identify individuals and groups of children with low activity levels. Teachers also use the markings as part of their lessons. Would highly recommend as it meets a lot of the criteria for the Sports Premium.