The Sport Education Model: A Step-by-Step Guide for Primary School

By Jarrod Robinson · February 25, 2026 · 10 min read

The Sport Education model sounds great in theory — but implementing it with younger students is another story. Josh Simpson shares the mistakes he made, the changes that worked, and a step-by-step framework for running a student-led sporting season in your primary PE classes.

You've probably heard of the Sport Education model — maybe at a PD session, maybe from a colleague, maybe it was mentioned in your teaching degree. It sounds great in theory: students run their own sporting season, complete with teams, fixtures, umpires, and a grand final. What's not to love?

But then you try it with a class of 10-year-olds, and everything falls apart. The umpires don't know the rules. A kid is absent so nobody's keeping score. The teams are wildly uneven because you picked basketball and three students play rep. Sound familiar?

Josh Simpson, a primary PE specialist from Melbourne, has been there. He tried implementing Sport Education (sometimes called SEPEP or CPEP) straight from his university training — and it flopped. But instead of abandoning the model, he stripped it right back, made some clever changes, and ended up with one of the most engaging PE units his students had ever experienced.

In his ConnectedPE conference session, Josh walks through the whole journey — the mistakes, the fixes, and the step-by-step approach that actually works with younger students. Below, we break down his practical framework so you can implement it in your own setting.

Watch the Full Session

What Is the Sport Education Model?

The Sport Education model (developed by Daryl Siedentop) is a student-centred approach to teaching sport that aims to mimic a real-world sporting season inside your PE programme. Instead of the teacher running every drill and game, students take ownership of an entire season — from team membership and strategy development to umpiring, scorekeeping, and even commentating.

Here's the basic idea: you break your class into persistent teams that stay together for a unit of five to eight weeks. Each week, teams follow a fixture, play their games in small-sided formats, and when they're not playing, they take on off-field roles — just like a real weekend sporting competition.

The goal? Create students who are competent, literate, and enthusiastic about sport:

• Competent — They develop skills, understand and execute strategies, and know how to play the game
• Literate — They understand fair play, the rules, and the rituals and traditions within a sport
• Enthusiastic — They're motivated to be physically active, not just through playing but through all the roles that make sport work

When it works, the benefits are significant: increased participation, improved attitudes towards PE, better catering for lower-ability students, and a broader scope for learning that goes well beyond just kicking a ball.

What Went Wrong: Josh's First Attempt

Josh was first introduced to the Sport Education model as a university student at Monash University. The experience was brilliant — teams were drafted, they chose their own names and colours, played European handball across a full season, coached each other, umpired on rotation, and finished with a grand final complete with commentary and food.

So Josh did what any enthusiastic graduate would do: he picked up that exact model and dropped it into his primary school. And it didn't work.

Looking back, Josh identified four clear mistakes:

1. Insufficient lead-in — Students were thrown into game play without enough foundation. Kids who played basketball outside of school dominated. Kids who didn't were lost.
2. Too much structure — Every role was pre-assigned week by week. When a student was absent, the whole system collapsed. If Josh was listed to umpire in week five and was away, nobody could fill the gap without chaos.
3. Expectations too high — He was asking 10-year-olds to perform at the level of university students. The complexity overwhelmed them.
4. Wrong sport choice — Basketball and netball created massive skill gaps between experienced and inexperienced players. The games became one-sided and disengaging.

My mistake was I pretty much picked it up from what I'd learned at uni and tried to implement it within my primary school setting. We had 10 and 12 year olds trying to fulfil roles that university students were doing.

Josh Simpson

The Fix: A Game Sense Lead-In Unit

After reflecting (and after a forced reset thanks to COVID remote learning), Josh stripped the model right back. His single biggest change? Adding a three-week territory games lead-in before the Sport Education season began.

Here's how his revised term planner looked:

• Week 1: Connection games — reconnecting students with PE, classmates, and the teacher
• Weeks 2–4: Territory games unit (game sense approach) — building skills, offensive strategies, and defensive strategies through modified games that lead into the chosen sport
• Weeks 5–8: The Sport Education season — teams, fixtures, roles, and real game play
• Week 9: Culminating event — a celebration of the season

The territory games unit used a game sense approach, with small-sided games played across the gym. Week two introduced basic skills and scoring. Week three focused on offensive strategies. Week four addressed defensive tactics. By the time the Sport Education season kicked off in week five, every student had a baseline understanding of how to play, what strategies to use, and what to expect.

That lead-in just gave the kids a little bit more knowledge on what to expect. It was a great lead-in for me to see how the students worked with others. It was good to see their skills. It was good to see who could adapt to different games or different rules. That for me was a game changer.

Josh Simpson

Choosing the Right Sport (This Matters More Than You Think)

One of the most practical insights from Josh's session is his approach to sport selection. After his basketball unit fell flat — with representative players dominating and beginners struggling — he made a deliberate switch to European handball.

Why? Because almost none of his students had played it before. That levelled the playing field instantly. Everyone was learning together, and the gap between the most and least experienced players was dramatically smaller.

Josh's advice: choose a sport that your students are largely unfamiliar with. This doesn't mean it has to be obscure — it just needs to be something where existing skill differences won't dominate. Territory games like European handball, tchoukball, or korfball work particularly well because the tactical concepts transfer across sports, but no one student has an unfair advantage from years of club experience.

Setting Up Your Sport Education Season

Once Josh had the lead-in sorted and the right sport selected, here's exactly how he structured the season:

Building Teams (Teacher Selection Is Your Friend)

Josh tried several approaches — drafts, blind draws, board of selectors — and landed firmly on teacher selection. Here's his method: print a class list, grab three different coloured highlighters, and go through as if you're doing a draft. Highlight the first student for team one (perhaps the most skilled), then the next colour for team two, and so on. This lets you balance talent and manage student dynamics — keeping productive pairs together and separating students who clash.

Critical tip: Always present teams in alphabetical order. If you list students by draft order, the last name on the list sends an unintended message. Alphabetical order means there's no hierarchy — it's just a list of names.

Pre-Made Team Names (A Rule Worth Breaking)

Traditional Sport Education says students should choose their own team names and colours. Josh deliberately broke this rule — and it paid off. He created three fixed teams (the Phoenix, the Sharks, and the Bees) with consistent colours and logos that he used across every class in the year level.

Why? Because when he let each class pick their own names, he couldn't keep track. He'd approach a team and not remember their name. With four different classes running the same unit, he needed four different fixtures. Stripping back to three consistent teams meant one fixture, one set of resources, and maximum cross-class buzz. Students from different classes were comparing notes in the yard: "I'm on the Phoenix — what team are you on?"

Off-Field Roles (Let Students Choose)

This was another major shift from Josh's first attempt. Instead of pre-assigning who umpires when, he gave students a whiteboard each week and let them choose their own roles. The only rule: you can't do the same role two weeks in a row.

The roles Josh used:

• Two scorers (keeping accurate score)
• One timekeeper
• Two referees or umpires
• One or two commentators (a student favourite!)
• One team captain

This flexibility solved multiple problems. If a student was absent, the team just dropped a role or the teacher covered it — no chaos. And students who weren't confident enough to referee in week one could build their knowledge over several weeks before stepping into that role. As Josh put it: "We're not throwing them in the deep end straight away."

The commentating role was a standout. Josh gave students a microphone, and some kids who weren't passionate about playing the sport lived for their turn to commentate. It became one of the biggest engagement drivers of the entire unit.

Team Tubs and Simplicity

Josh created a colour-coded tub for each team containing their bibs, a whiteboard, a marker, their team logo, and (where possible) a matching ball. Every week, the routine was the same: grab your tub, sort your roles on the whiteboard, warm up as a team, then play.

He also ditched his elaborate ESPN-style digital scoreboard (which kept breaking when students hit the wrong button) in favour of a simple flip-number scoreboard. The lesson? Simplicity is key. Every minute spent troubleshooting technology is a minute not spent playing.

I made a big scoreboard on Google that had the little ESPN logo and a timer and all the bells and whistles. Half the time it wouldn't work because a student would hit a button that deleted it all. So I found that simplicity is key.

Josh Simpson

What a Typical Week Looks Like

By weeks five through eight, Josh's lessons followed a consistent, predictable routine:

1. Students enter the gym, mark the roll, brief reminders or a focus for the day (e.g. sportsmanship)
2. Teams collect their tubs and allocate roles on the whiteboard (about eight minutes)
3. Team warm-up — usually the mini-game from the lead-in unit, played within their team
4. Game time — following the same fixture each week. Two teams play, one team handles off-field roles
5. Rotate and repeat
6. Brief whole-class wrap-up

In the early weeks, games were short — around three minutes — with plenty of stops for teaching moments. By the end of the unit, Josh was running two four-minute halves with students managing almost everything themselves.

The predictable structure was deliberate. Students knew exactly what to expect each week, which reduced anxiety and maximised playing time. As Josh described it: "You guys come in, we say good day, and off you go."

The Culminating Event: Celebrating the Season

Week nine is the culminating event — a time to celebrate growth and success. Josh shared several ideas that work well at the primary level:

• Skills challenge — Think NBA All-Star Weekend. Trick shots, skills courses, or challenges that let every student showcase what they've learned
• All-star game — Select students from each class to form two all-star teams for a lunchtime exhibition match. Other year levels can come and watch. The selection criteria? Not the best players — the students who showed the best sportsmanship, teamwork, and values throughout the unit
• Finals and grand final — If you've run a ladder, play off the top teams
• Awards — Think beyond MVP. Award most consistent, best sportsmanship, most improved. Celebrate the behaviours you want to see, not just the scoreboard

Why This Approach Works (Especially with Younger Students)

What makes Josh's approach stand out is the honesty about what doesn't work. The traditional Sport Education model was designed for older students, and dropping it wholesale into a primary setting sets everyone up for frustration. His refined approach works because it:

• Gives students a genuine foundation before asking them to be autonomous
• Removes the skill gap problem through smart sport selection
• Builds flexibility into roles instead of rigid structure that breaks when someone's absent
• Creates cross-class excitement through consistent team identities
• Prioritises simplicity over impressive-looking systems that fail in practice

The result? Students who were genuinely buzzing about PE. Josh described hearing kids talking about their teams in the yard, asking each other how their games went, comparing scores between classes. That's the holy grail — students who care about PE beyond the lesson.

I heard students constantly talking about it in the yard. My PE office has a window that backs onto the yard and I heard kids walking past talking about it. They're excited to know what teams they're in. They're excited to know how each other went.

Josh Simpson

Key Takeaways

• The Sport Education model works at the primary level — but you need to adapt it, not just transplant it from secondary or university settings
• A three-week game sense lead-in is essential for building baseline skills, strategies, and confidence before the season starts
• Choose a sport most students are unfamiliar with (like European handball) to level the playing field
• Teacher-selected teams presented in alphabetical order keeps things fair and balanced
• Let students choose their off-field roles each week rather than pre-assigning — it builds ownership and solves the absent-student problem
• Keep it simple: flip scoreboards beat digital ones, team tubs create predictable routines, and consistent team names across classes generate excitement
• Start with short games (three minutes) and build up as students gain confidence and understanding
• Be kind to yourself — this approach develops over years, not overnight. If something fails, reflect and adjust

Watch the Full Session Free on ConnectedPE

This blog post covers the highlights, but Josh's full session goes much deeper — including his complete term planner, detailed examples of how he set up team tubs and fixtures, live audience Q&A about managing competitive students, and practical tips for the culminating event.

The course is completely free in the ConnectedPE members area. Sign up or log in to watch the full session and earn a professional development certificate for your portfolio.

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About Josh Simpson

Josh Simpson is a primary school PE specialist from Melbourne, Australia, with eight years of experience teaching students aged five to twelve. He shares practical PE resources and ideas through Heads Up HPE on social media, his website, and his podcast. Josh's approach centres on student voice and agency, practical implementation over theory, and the belief that keeping things simple often creates the most impactful learning experiences.

Tags: Sport Education, SEPEP, Physical Education, Student-Led PE, Primary PE, Teaching Tips, Game Sense