HARTFORD Primary School received a special visitor earlier this week to present the school with their platinum award for their PE provision.

The school hosted world champion inline skater, Jenna Downing, as she ran a leadership workshop and presented the school with the prestigious award.

Tom Cairns, 38, head of PE, spoke to the Guardian about the award and the experience.

He said: “She came into school to work with our school sports organising crew to do a leadership workshop and to present us with our platinum award.

“The leadership workshop was a treat for our school sports organising crew and they learnt all about different leadership qualities and did a number of activities to showcase their own leadership skills.”

To be eligible for this award, the school’s PE department must meet some extensive criteria.

Mr Cairns said: “Originally you can get a bronze, silver or gold award and to qualify for the platinum award you have to win the gold award five years in a row.

“Once you have won the gold award five years in a row, you have to do a case study on the PE provision of your school.

“You have to provide two hours of PE in school, attend a set number of competitions and we enter a lot of competitions and have been successful in them and we also provide after school clubs which a lot of children attend.

“We also have a change for life programme for our less gifted children so that we have something for everyone at our school.”

Mr Cairns has been the head of PE for nine years at Hartford Primary School and revealed the prestigious nature of the award.

He said: “Only 104 schools in the country received the Platinum award this year so we’re very pleased about it.”