The Clitheroe teacher helping young people develop physical literacy skills

Jason Jones, who is the Head of PE & Sport at Skipton Academy, launched PB & ME – an abbreviation for Personal Best & Mental Endurance – after noticing that a large number of young people were lacking in physical literacy skills following the coronavirus pandemic.

The project is focused on helping young people develop confidence, resilience and positive habits through structured physical activity and guided reflection. Earlier this year, Jones launched his first funded programme, “Bounce Back”, which aims to support children who may face barriers to sport and physical activity. The barriers include low confidence, low activity levels, negative past experiences or a lack of opportunities, according to Jones.

“I realised that there's not a lot going on for young people within the community. If you're not into football or gymnastics or swimming around here, you've got to travel everywhere,” Jones said. “So what I've thought I'd try and do and aim to use this community interest company to try and do is create physical activities for young people who perhaps aren't sporting or sport-minded, who don't really want to go and compete in matches at weekends, but enjoy being physically active and want to have fun through physical activity,” Jones finished.

Nevertheless, it was evident when speaking to Jones that he’s adopting a community-minded approach with the PB&ME project and also serves as head coach of the Ribble Valley Runners junior section. The project will also provide the opportunity for participants to develop their social skills.

“Ultimately, I want to try and challenge them, in fun and like fun and safe spaces", Jones said. “I want them to practise resilience techniques for life, family, school, relationships, sports, and physical activity. So it's sort of like, how can we bounce back from that setback? How can we bounce back from that mistake? Looking at utilising like journaling items, so that they can track performance and track improvements.

“The young people will benefit through the social interaction, through the different sort of grouping activities and differentiated activities that I create and that are flexible so that it's accessible. And therefore, then they can flourish, feel confident and ultimately grow, whether that be physically, emotionally, mentally or intellectually. There are all these things that the sport and physical activity can provide,” Jones finished.

When it comes to the initiative, Jones has stressed the importance of developing confidence, resilience and positive habits, but what is the first objective he’s looking to achieve?

“Get them physically active. Just create physical activity, and broaden the range of opportunities available to young people. They just need to know that this opportunity is fun and engaging and you want them to try and go away and practise this at home, and I'm going to be giving them access to equipment, some things that they can go home and try and learn with and develop and then bring back, and then we further develop those skills. But ultimately, it's about, like, just getting and giving them more physical activity and broadening the range of opportunities,” Jones finished.