Developing a life-long interest
Physical Education is taught throughout the school by subject specialists. The aims of the department are:
- To encourage enjoyment and satisfaction through physical activity
- To reach a standard which reflects each student’s ability
- To motivate each student to take regular exercise
- To foster a lifelong interest in physical activity
Physical Education is a compulsory subject in Years 7-13 and a variety of skills are acquired within lessons.
- Years 7-9 follow programmes in gymnastics, hockey, netball, rugby, football, badminton, tennis, athletics and rounders.
- Years 10 follow a programme of activities to include hockey, football, netball, volleyball, badminton, fitness and handball.
- Year 11 follow either a leisure-based or competitive-based programme of activities alongside Year 12 and 13 on a Wednesday afternoon. This involves a large selection of activities to choose from; rowing, spinning and walking through to competitive team-based activities where training and fixtures will be played in this time.
- Introduction of our new Q-Elevate programme for Year 12 and 13 includes them taking part in Q-Enrich where they can opt for a variety of physical activities such as competitive sports like hockey and netball, alongside recreational activities such as ice skating, yoga and climbing.
Alongside Physical Education, girls are encouraged to stay physically active throughout the week by accessing our Fitness for All programme, which aims for all girls to be active in some form of activity through our extensive extracurricular programme. This includes non-competitive activities such as Pilates, yoga and cheer-leading.
To read more about the value of girls' schools in developing women in sport, please visit the GSA Women in Sport pages.
To find out more about our extracurricular sport successes please browse our news pages (link) or to see how busy the department is please check our calendar (link) where you will be able to filter entries to see all our fixtures.
Sport facilities
Our outdoor sports facilities enable a wide range of sports, including lacrosse, hockey and athletics. Netball and tennis is played on our courts.
The development of our sport and fitness facilities at the Senior School helps us now deliver more activities, more often to more girls.
We now have three bespoke indoor and very different sports facilities at the Senior School site:
- The Fitness Suite which has been updated with a range of new and versatile equipment.
- The Fitness Studio which is a modern and airy space
- The new Sports Hall with colourful rebound walls and excellent storage.
This enables us to deliver not just traditional school sports but also activities such as boxercise, rowing, tag rugby, yoga, dance, Pilates, sailing, road cycling and jogging. These activities are available both within and outside of the curriculum and are designed to encourage all our pupils to try something that they may take up as a fitness activity on a more long-term basis.
Future investment in sport facilities
We have exciting plans for a major investment in the sporting provision at Queen’s.
Planning permission has now been granted to build an Astroturf multi-sports pitch on our playing field at the senior school site. This impressive new facility will provide huge benefits for both our school and the local community and will encompass a full-size hockey pitch, a lacrosse pitch, a 200m running track and will also be available for a range of other outdoor sports and training activities, including netball, tennis and football.
This will be a significant new resource for the girls at Queen’s, which will give many more opportunities to play sport throughout the year, and it will also be a valuable new centrally-located resource for the local community outside of school hours and during school holidays. We view this development as vital for hockey and outdoor sport in general at Queen’s, as well as an invaluable resource for the local community which will increase the opportunities to play sport and engage in outdoor activities for more people and for longer periods of time throughout the year, in a city where facilities are in extremely short supply.
Given the proximity of the location of the proposed pitch to Chester City Walls, the plans have been drawn up to be as sympathetic to the surroundings as possible, including retractable floodlighting to minimise any disturbance to local residents. In our opinion, it is an ideal site for the school and extremely well located for use by third parties.
