Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s Partner Schools Officer Richard Cattley has been working in his new role since September in the Armley Schools cluster, overseeing seven of the Swallow Hill Community College feeder schools
The Partner Schools scheme, which started in September 2014, has a total of 40 schools signed up to receive coaching from the Leeds Rhinos Foundation and created four newly established Partner Schools Officer positions to work in Leeds’ Primary Schools.
Richard’s role sees him work with the seven primary schools in the Armley area that all form part of the pyramid that feeds into Swallow Hill Community College including: Armley Primary, Castleton, Christ Church, St Bart's School, Holy Family, Five Lanes and Whingate Primary School.
Although part of the same partner schools scheme as fellow schools officers Emma Davis, Dan Hardy and Tony Aubrey, Richard’s role differs from the other three officers and sees him based at Swallow Hill Community College two days a week, while servicing the primary schools on the other three.
Richard’s role is essentially that of a Schools Sports Co-ordinator with his time split between the cluster primary schools and the hub secondary school, aiding in delivery of sport, but also organising cluster level activity to support the activity that already occurs on a city-wide basis.
One of the main successes in his role has been the implementing of cluster competitions to reflect the coaching the children receive in lessons, providing a variety of events that have taken place since the beginning of September.
Students from all seven primary schools have taken part in cluster level tournaments to date, from both the Key Stage 1 and 2 aged groups. Events such as KS2 Mixed Tag Rugby, KS2 Mixed Netball, KS1 Mixed Football, KS2 Boys Football and KS2 Girls Football have all taken place for Richard’s cluster schools so far this academic year.
The take up of the tournaments has seen each school within the cluster attend at least two of these tournaments, four schools attending all but one and one school attending every event so far. In total there have been close to 250 boys and girls taking part in extracurricular competition since September.
The above events don’t take into account Richard’s curriculum time delivery, which involves overseeing the recruitment and training of sports leaders who supplement these afternoon competitions, which is another of Richard’s responsibilities when based at Swallow Hill. The leaders have assisted in the running of the events with roles such as refereeing, scoring and running drills with the attending schools.
The School Partner scheme ran by the Leeds Rhinos Foundation, is still in its infancy having only been in operation since the start of the 2014/15 academic year, but Richard can already reflect on both a wide ranging and busy catalogue of events taking place since his role started:
“This first term has been great. I have managed to settle in quickly and we got straight into things with regards to sports festivals. Complementing this has been my delivery in the cluster schools which has helped support the events that we have run. The partnership with Swallow Hill has also been a huge help. With me being based there two days a week it enables me to link up with and train the student sports leaders who have played a valuable role in the success of our tournaments.”
The work doesn’t stop there however, with even more to look forward to this term. Events such as: sports hall athletics, climbing wall and adventure activities along with a multi-sport event are all planned for the coming weeks, in what promises to be an active year for the students in the Armley schools.
For more information on the Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s primary school partnerships contact lisa.mccann@leedsrugbyfoundation.org