Morton Trentside School celebrate another award

Gainsborough's Morton Trentside Primary School is this week celebrating being named Active School of the Year at the Lincolnshire Sports Awards ceremony in Lincolnshire Showground's Epic Centre.

This follows on from recently becoming the first Lincolnshire school to receive the Sainsbury’s Gold School Games award.

Delighted assistant head teacher and PE co-ordinator Samantha Evans said the latest award was reward not only for the pupils, but for the staff, parents and local community too for all their efforts in being active.

“Everybody has invested so much time into getting our children active, so the fact it’s been recognised at county level is lovely for everybody,” she said.

“We had to be nominated for the Active School award by the local community and we were nominated by our sponsors, Ping Europe,” she said.

“Apparently there were loads of schools nominated for it and we knew we had been short-listed in the final three.

“It was unbelievable on the night when they called our name out. We just couldn’t believe it, though I suppose we should as we do so much work towards it.

“We have recently won the Gold award for school games but they didn’t know that when the nominations went in, So the fact we won it without them knowing that, we just couldn’t believe it.

“Everybody’s confidence has been given a real boost and everyone is walking round with grins on faces. We told the children at assembly on Friday and there was this eruption of cheers.”

The win saw Morton beat off competition from Ellison Boulters Church of England Academy and the Barnes Wallis Academy.

Criteria for the award, sponsored by The Danwood Group, stated that nominees must be a school that has made an outstanding contribution to physical education, sport, well being or healthy living, through teaching, coaching, organising or administration.

Every morning Morton Trentside pupils, staff and parents run a mile as they come into school, to ensure that children are alert and ready to learn.

The whole school took part in a Race for Life in June to raise £5,000 for Cancer Research on behalf of their caretaker, Mrs Julie Pacey, who sadly lost her life to the disease.

Each week Morton Trentside hold intra-school competitions in a variety of sports from Boccia to multi skills.

Their young sports leaders and sports council promote active playtimes and they hold clubs every lunchtime and after school each day which their children oversee and plan for.

They have recently been awarded sponsorship of £1000 by PING Europe because of their active approach to learning which can be seen throughout their lessons.

Morton Trentside say they use this approach to ensure that children are alert and engaged in physical activity as much as possible.

Most recently, Morton Trentside has been asked to trial the new Skills2Achieve tracking and assessment tool by the Youth Sports Trust because their status as a leading active school.

Each week their children are at different inter-school competitions and so far this year they have qualified for seven county finals.

Morton Trentside also promote and hold healthy eating workshops for the community and their pupils.