Active Schools Virtual Awards: Special Contribution

Alison McKay

Alison has recently retired from her role as Principal Teacher at Cramond PS and due to her engagement with Active Schools over the years and her constant inspiration and encouragement to the young pupils in her school it felt appropriate to award her the Active Schools Special Contribution Award.

As a Principal Teacher, time is always precious, yet Alison still found the time to host several netball clubs for pupils as well as organising all other sport for the school. Alison’s commitment and dedication to sport at Cramond has been incredible.

Alison helped set up the school’s Sports Council along with the Active Schools Coordinator to look at sport and physical activity within the school. Monthly meetings were held to discuss clubs, tasters, PE, profile of sport, sports days, guest speakers and celebrating sport. Alison helped apply for the School Sport Award in 2018 with the school achieving Silver. Alison was instrumental in changing procedures and offering more opportunities for the following year and the school was successfully awarded the Gold School Sport Award earlier this year.

Alison also encouraged many of her teachers to lead extra-curricular clubs, as she wanted the pupils to have as many opportunities as possible. She was very positive about clubs delivering taster sessions and blocks of sport during curriculum time and had a great understanding about how this creates strong links with community clubs. Alison had good relationships with parents and was a great asset for Active Schools when it came to recruiting parent volunteers. 75.9% of sessions at Cramond are volunteer delivered which is due to Alison’s support in recruiting volunteers.

Currently 56% of the school roll take part in extracurricular clubs and with a school roll of 441, that is some task. Alison truly deserves all the recognition for what she has achieved during her time at Cramond Primary. Alison has been a great ambassador for sport.