Two children: one boy, one girl. One loud, one quiet. One who would career around the school in fits of rage. One who barely spoke and kept her eyes pointed at the floor, hoping that no one would notice her. Now, all that has changed.

The boy, quietly passing his headteacher in a stairwell, gets a big hug for his birthday - it’s today - and, despite being a touch shy, tells us calmly about the schoolwork he’s been enjoying lately. The girl, meanwhile, thinks little of getting up and addressing an audience of 500 schoolmates during assemblies.

These transformations are among the most remarkable that St Rose of Lima Primary School has seen, and there is a common factor in both: sport.

This may seem surprising to those of us with dim memories of “gym” at primary school being little more than an occasional chaotic game of dodgeball. At St Rose of Lima, the set-up couldn’t be more different.

About five years ago, the Glasgow primary decided that school sport needed far more substance. Since then, it has won multiple awards, including becoming one of the first primaries to gain a SportScotland School Sport Gold Award; it was also shortlisted in the UK-wide Tes Schools Awards 2018, in the healthy schools category. When bestowing a prize in 2016, Scottish Sport Awards judges said that “we’d be a better nation” if “every school realised the unifying power of sport as well as St Rose of Lima Primary”.

The school provides a remarkable range of sports to pupils in Craigend, in the East End of Glasgow, delivered by its own staff and through linking up with sports teams, coaches and community clubs. But much of the work is driven by older pupils - an experience teachers believe has the potential to alter the course of their young lives.

Headteacher Kathleen Shiels wants to get away from the old idea that PE and sport are for “letting off steam” - with the implication being that they mark a pause from learning, an adjunct to the main business of school. Glasgow education director Maureen McKenna - a former international netball player and maths teacher - says what St Rose of Lima Primary has done to follow through on that aim is “awesome”.

“The school uses sport as a driver for improvement,” McKenna says. “It permeates their learning - they use maths skills to track and monitor participation. They use their literacy skills when they report on their achievements. They develop skills for life and work through working with partners and organising activities and events.

“The list could go on, but more than anything else, they are contributing to their communities. They link with sports clubs to ensure that the sport being delivered in their schools can [also] be accessed by pupils outwith school through club links. They also run some out-of-school clubs themselves.”

An Olympic effort

McKenna’s comments provide a good summary of what the primary has done, but only by visiting do you really get a feel for how sport drives school life. The numbers alone are striking: there are 30 sports clubs at the 490-pupil school, with something on every lunchtime and every day after lessons finish. There is no annual sports day, but rather a sports week, and the school has its own version of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year for pupils.

Staff believe that everyone can find a sport they enjoy and should be given as many opportunities as possible to do so. During the 2016 Olympics, that ambition was taken to extremes: the school’s #RosieRoadtoRio project aimed to let pupils try each of the 28 Olympic sports. Some were harder to provide than others - it took a bit of imagination on a dreich day at nearby Hogganfield Loch to simulate volleyball on Copacabana beach.

The school’s approach to sport and PE is about as far away as it is possible to get from the image propounded by films and television shows like Grange Hill over the years, where teachers were belligerent, pupils shivered on the sidelines or faced ritual humiliation on the pitch, and the changing rooms were lorded over by sadistic bullies.

“It’s not all about winning,” says Shiels. “You’re not in competition with other people - you’re in competition with yourself. A lot of people don’t thrive in competitive sport.”

Sports, she believes, should provide spaces where “you make mistakes [but] your self-esteem is not crushed”. And pupils learn that sportsmanship is essential - even parents must sign up to an agreement to that effect, to prevent children being subjected to abuse or aggressive roaring from the side of the pitch.

The school has 30 “PE leaders” in P5-6, who wear red jumpers; they might take warm-ups with younger pupils or set up a PE session. There are also four “sports captains” in P6-7, who sometimes wear black T-shirts to stand out. They oversee many of the activities and encourage schoolmates to take part, as well as holding weekly meetings, gathering attendance statistics and assessing which sessions are working best.

“It’s not a ‘kiddie-onnie’ job - they’re not just standing about wearing T-shirts,” says Shiels, who is acutely aware that school projects to promote “pupil voice” often appear tokenistic. To illustrate the PE leaders’ genuine sense of empowerment, she recounts the story of a girl who casually walked past a wall of class photos, pointed at one and said: “That’s the class I teach.”

The anything goes one-upmanship that often mars professional sport is a far cry from the supportive ethos at St Rose of Lima Primary. Even before sport started to play a more central role, the school was well used to giving a leg-up to children who needed it. Of the 490 pupils, 150 do not speak English as their first language and, in all, 295 children require some kind of extra support in their learning. So there is a calming “sensory room” with emoji cushions and coloured lights, for example, which has been helpful for autistic pupils; the school is also a long-time champion of the “nurture” approaches for which Glasgow has become well known.

You can’t always pour pupils into a physical activity and just wait for sport to work its magic - you have to get them into a suitable frame of mind first, as St Rose of Lima staff know well. “If you’re like a box of frogs and go into a gym, you can be dangerous and you could be removed from the gym - when that activity might be the very thing you need,” says Shiels.

If you ask a pupil whom they look up to in sport, they are as likely to name a coach or an Active Schools coordinator they work with as a famous sports star. “We don’t watch sport here - we participate in it,” says Shiels. “Everyone finds success in sport. It’s not just about the sporty people - it’s about encouraging children to find some activity that they take pleasure in.”

Sports such as curling and boccia are suited to children with physical disabilities, for example. And arriving at school without a PE kit will not get you out of activities: pupils are generally expected to participate in whatever attire they have with them, such is the importance assigned to sport.

Keeping score

Shiels reels off examples of pupils who have benefited from school sport: the boy who took part in a karate taster having no idea of his own natural aptitude, who now travels abroad to compete in elite competitions; the girl who was struggling academically and in past generations might have drifted towards a low-skilled job, but whose bubbly and self-motivated character led her to thrive in sports organisation and administration.

“We’ve given her the skills to go into management - she will become a manager or a supervisor one day,” says Shiels.

Some pupils have shown ingenuity beyond the sports pitch. One girl’s suggestion of a loyalty card - after participating in 10 sports sessions, holders will receive a perk - was an innovation that particularly impressed SportScotland.

Then there’s the boy mentioned at the start of this article, who has just turned 8. Before, says Shiels, “we were protecting children from him”. In the past, if she had encountered the pupil in the corridor, she would not have been able to have a calm conversation with him - or give him a birthday hug.

The change came about, she says, because the school tapped into his love of football, largely through a pupil-support worker and football coach called Lauren Bulloch - recruited with part of the primary’s allocation of the national Pupil Equity Fund. As well as honing his skills on the pitch, the boy has channelled his enthusiasm for football into the classroom, and he proudly shows off a replica stadium that he has built out of recycled materials.

Bulloch, who in her trainers and Nike hoodie cuts a different figure from a typical teacher, says of the variety of sports activities at the school: “The most important thing is that there’s something for everybody.”

That was a belief that drove Fergus Donnelly, the former St Rose of Lima teacher who was the instigator of the school’s sporting ambitions. Donnelly, now a depute head at St Francis of Assisi Primary, also in Glasgow, says success in sport should be measured in myriad ways: some pupils will compete at a high level, but for others just taking part is a big step in the right direction.

One of his favourite St Rose of Lima events is an annual 5km run - younger children run shorter distances - attended by cheering families, with pupils receiving a medal for their efforts. “Some kids are used to winning medals in sport, but others aren’t,” he says. “Some come in as if they’ve won the World Cup - they can’t keep the smile off their face and don’t take off their medal for weeks.”

Donnelly grew up watching his father espousing the power of sport in his role as a football coach. He says sport has made him more resilient - no matter how bad a day he has had, the prospect of running a few miles or whacking a load of tennis balls provides constant reassurance - and it is now doing the same for pupils.

Shiels agrees, and sees that resilience transferring into the classroom: “If you take a risk in gymnastics, then you might want the feeling of taking a risk with a mathematical problem or a sentence construction.

“Pupils don’t expect to get everything right in football, but they punish themselves for not getting everything right in a literacy task. You need to show them it’s the same feeling - you don’t need to be perfect.”

Staff believe that sport is helping them to drive up attainment, although it is hard to prove a direct, causal link. But Donnelly says the rise in self-esteem, confidence, motivation and concentration levels can only have benefits in the classroom.

“One wee [P6] girl was very, very shy - she wouldn’t get involved in anything,” he adds. But after becoming a sports captain, the girl was transformed from someone who would barely look up from a desk to a leader who thinks nothing of speaking in front of 500 pupils at an assembly.

“She gave a presentation at SportScotland about what the school was doing - with all these movers and shakers from the sports world - and she and the other kids were full of beans, interacting with all these people and not even being really aware of how impressive this was.”

There are also pupils who go out and walk a “daily mile” in their own time, without any need for organised sessions under the auspices of the popular scheme with the same name. And Shiels smiles at the memory of an entire P6 class unselfconsciously practising an exuberant dance routine - even those with no obvious rhythm, and even boys who would previously have baulked at the idea.

In another league

At Donnelly’s current primary, there are 44 different sports clubs outside school that pupils are part of; at St Rose of Lima, where historically the local area has not had such a vibrant sports culture, the figure would have been far fewer. Donnelly believes it is essential that such primary schools take a lead in creating more opportunities for children to be active - especially with dislike of sport often hardening very early, and physical activity levels dropping off sharply in the teenage years (see figures, page 19).

He adds, however, that schools can’t do this by themselves: support from SportScotland and the Active Schools programme was critical in St Rose of Lima’s success.

SportScotland chief executive Stewart Harris, in turn, says that the primary has shown “great innovation with its Sport Captain, PE Leaders and Sport Club Loyalty Card programmes, and set a benchmark for others to follow by incorporating sport throughout the curriculum”.

Staff and pupils’ enthusiasm for sport has rippled beyond the school gates, with activities drawing in hard-to-reach families. Donnelly explains that “you see parents you might not have seen in months - but they open up to you at the side of the football pitch”. And Beacon Warriors, a local community sports club, says the approach of St Rose of Lima has played a big part in attendance doubling at its sessions.

Back at the school, every day Shiels sees sport catalysing skills, confidence and aspirations that may have fizzled out without it. “There’s an energy in the school - and not just in the gym,” she says.

Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

‘You can teach any part of the curriculum through sport’

Research by the University of Edinburgh backs up what staff at St Rose of Lima Primary instinctively know to be true: sport helps children to do better in school and set their aspirations higher.

The university’s Educated Pass scheme helps S2 boys from deprived neighbourhoods who are in local football teams to see the relevance of the school curriculum, and it encourages them to apply the same level of commitment in the classroom as on the pitch.

A report released in August by the university’s widening participation team tracked the education and health outcomes of pupils who took part in 2011-12 and 2012-13, and would have entered the final year of school in 2016 or 2017. Participants were found to be staying on longer at school and doing better than expected in Highers, with 100 per cent entering higher or further education, training or employment.

Project leader Neil Speirs said: “The results from our report are incredibly heartening and demonstrate the important role that sport can play in engaging young people in education.

“You can teach any part of the curriculum through the aperture of sport or football - data analysis, poetry, fashion. We are using language that connects with the pupils in front of us.”

Educated Pass is funded by the Sutton Trust social mobility charity and is run with Edinburgh College, West Lothian College and the Scottish Youth Football Association.

The champion who bunked off PE

Eve Muirhead is arguably Scotland’s most successful female sports star of current times - but she used to bunk off PE.

In an interview with Tes Scotland in April, the curling star said: “You could get out of it pretty easily. I remember a couple of times I would make the excuse that I’d forgotten my kit, because maybe it wasn’t cool and some of my friends weren’t doing it.”

Muirhead - who has been world champion and has won an Olympic bronze medal - recalled that her teachers were “lenient” on pupils who ducked out of PE, and she questioned whether they would have reacted the same way if young people had been trying to get out of maths.

A more hardline approach to PE participation would show that it was being taken seriously, Muirhead suggested.

The curler also echoed St Rose of Lima Primary School’s principle that pupils should be given as many opportunities as possible to find a sport they enjoyed. “It’s not how you take part, it’s taking part that counts,” she said.

Muirhead stressed that this was particularly important for girls, whose physical activity levels drop off sharply. “Sport to young girls isn’t cool - getting sweaty, your make-up coming off, wearing shorts,” she said.

But she cautioned that gentle encouragement was vital to overcome reluctant pupils’ resistance: “The last thing you want to do is push people into sport.”