For National School Sport Week, we’re shining a light on Blended Netball – a secondary school peer to peer offer from England Netball.
It is designed for mainstream girls to deliver netball to girls with special educational needs, allowing them to benefit by gaining important life skills such as leadership, communication and empathy.
There are over 1.3m pupils with Special Educational Needs in England which equates to 70 SEN girls in the average state secondary school.
The majority of SEN pupils don’t have the same access to high-quality PE when compared to their mainstream peers and as a consequence often miss out on netball.
Blended Netball is a free programme that schools can deliver internally without the need for additional training.
There are six resources designed to be read and delivered by mainstream netballers, rather than teachers. The resources take players from absolute zero all the way to match play.
Blended Netball has been in the works for two years and has been thoroughly tested and piloted over this period. It is a fantastic way to develop not only the netball skills of SEN girls but also leadership skills of mainstream girls.
In its first year, Blended Netball has seen more than 1,200 SEN girls take part across the country.
Richard Evans, Strategic Lead for Disability and Inclusion, said: “Girls who have played netball all their school life can now pass on their skills to girls who have never played before, whilst learning about leadership, empathy, communication skills and so on.
“It’s an opportunity for girls to interact with people from their community who they wouldn’t come into contact with. That’s so powerful and a real win-win situation.”
If you want to find out more or sign your school up for free, then head to our ParaNetball section of the website.
To find out more about National School Sport Week, click here.
