‘To a certain extent it is a business decision’: Exploring external providers’ perspectives of delivering outsourced primary school physical education

The use of external providers to deliver primary school physical education (PE) shows no signs of slowing in England. Longstanding concerns into outsourcing primary school PE have highlighted the extent to which external providers often lack appropriate teaching qualifications and pedagogical knowledge. That said, when compared to primary school generalist teachers, external providers have been argued to be the ‘best fit’ to deliver primary school PE due to their greater knowledge base and experience of delivering curriculum activities, such as competitive team games. There is a paucity of research however surrounding external providers’ perspectives on their delivery of primary school PE, with their important insights and experiences underrepresented in the literature. This study, therefore, seeks to explore external providers’ perspectives and reflections on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices as delivered by them in outsourced primary school PE lessons. Semi-structured interviews were conducted over the telephone and Skype (video call) with 10 external providers, from four different outsourcing companies in the North of England. Penney et al.’s (2009, Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment: Three message systems of schooling and dimensions of quality physical education. Sport, Education and Society, 14(4), 421–442) three message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment were used as a theoretical lens that aided the analysis of the data. The findings demonstrate that external providers: (1) developed and followed their own curriculum frameworks formed by their outsourcing companies to deliver in schools; (2) utilised various student-centred pedagogical approaches to deliver curriculum content that was driven by their formal and informal educational experiences to engage young people and (3) unlike some of the literature suggests, they provided assessment practices that were integrated into their curriculum frameworks. It was concluded that careful consideration must be taken by schools when contemplating whether to employ (or not) external providers to provide their curriculum content, deliver their primary school PE lessons, and to assess their pupils.