Victoria has had PE specialists in primary schools since the 1990s. NSW still runs a generalist model. So who is actually teaching K-6 PDHPE to our kids?

This week on The PDHPE and CAFS Podcast, Victorian-trained PE specialist Rhett McDonald shares what he found when he moved to NSW and why it prompted him to email me after our last primary PE episode.

We unpack:

• Why sport is not PE and what our kids lose when we confuse the two
• Why generalist teachers can't be experts in everything and what that means for K-6 PDHPE
• The wellbeing programs schools pay thousands for that are already sitting inside the K-6 PDHPE syllabus

If you're a NSW primary teacher winging Wednesday PE, this one is for you.

Listen now.

Ready to teach K-6 PDHPE with confidence? Join the K-6 Primary PDHPE Membership: thelearnnet.com/pdhpe

The ageing population content in Health and Movement Science has been reworked and most of us are teaching it with little more than the syllabus to work from. That makes it hard to give Health and Movement Science students anything concrete enough to build a strong response around.

This week on The PDHPE & CAFS Podcast, Kelly Bell sits down with exercise physiologist Rob Lyon to talk through the burden of disease in Australia and what a genuine intervention looks like once you are working with a real older adult rather than a hypothetical one.

Here is what is in it for you:

• Lifespan versus health span and why the gap between them is where the burden of disease actually lands
• Why around 40 to 45 percent of older Australians are taking more than five medications
• Interventions specific enough for students to write about, linking back to ageing population
• Shared responsibility, including the personal accountability in health

Rob spent three years working in cardiology in Arizona before founding Lyon Health, where he uses exercise as prescriptive medicine to help clients improve their health, performance and longevity.

Connect with Rob: lyonhealth.com.au, Instagram @lyon__health

Your Year 12 Health and Movement Science students can define arousal, anxiety and mental rehearsal. Put a scenario question in front of them and the application marks disappear.

Part Two of our conversation with world champion tumbler Sami Palmer gives you applied material for Training for improved performance. Kelly Bell and Sami work through what psychological strategies actually looked like in competition, so you walk away with stimulus you can build a lesson around instead of another set of definitions.

Here is what is in it for you.

- Two World Cups, two weeks apart. Same athlete, same skills, two different performances.

- Mental rehearsal with its limits attached.

- A pre-performance routine your students can pull apart.

- The physiological link, where slowing the breathing changes what the body has available

Useful for Year 11 too. The Body and Mind in Motion is where the relationship between psychology and performance is first introduced and this gives you a case study students actually remember.

You do not need Part One to use this episode, though it is worth your drive home.

Listen now, then take one moment from Sami's competition into Monday's lesson as your scenario stimulus.

You have taught anxiety and arousal in Health and Movement Science but your students are still not sure how to apply these concepts. 

This week on The PDHPE & CAFS Podcast, Kelly Bell speaks with world champion tumbler Sami Palmer about what those concepts look like from inside a competition and how to bring them to life for your Health and Movement Science. 

Here is what is in it for you:

- Mental rehearsal that helps instead of harms. 

- Why neutral self-talk beats positive self-talk

- Concentration and attentional focus made concrete. 

Sami competed for Great Britain at her first World Championships five days after her twelfth birthday and now works in performance wellbeing with Australian Athletics.

Most of our students here in Australia will never play representative sport. All of them will need a body that works at seventy.

So why does so much of PE still look like a pipeline to elite performance?

Kelly Bell from The Learning Network speaks with ultra marathon runner, Pat Farmer, about what PE is actually for. Pat is the only person to have run continuously from the North Pole to the South Pole and holds multiple world records for endurance running. At school, the longest he ever ran was the length of a footy field.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why the goal is lifelong movement, not talent identification
• Why "just have fun" is the most underrated instruction in PE
• How to break big goals into bite-sized pieces with your students

The kid who is not sporty is still yours to teach.

Your Health and Movement Science students know the content.
So why are they still losing marks?

With Health and Movement Science Trials, Year 11 yearly exams and the HSC just around the corner, this episode unpacks what actually separates a strong Health and Movement Science response from an average one.

Kelly Bell from The Learning Network shares what 16 years of HSC marking and more than 40,000 student responses have taught her about the three mistakes students make in the HSC. Surface level content. 

None of these are new problems.

They have been showing up in PDHPE and CAFS marking for over two decades and they are showing up in HMS right now.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why content alone will only ever get your students part way there
• How to take your teaching wide and deep instead of skimming the surface
• Why the Glossary of Key Words is the unsung hero of HSC success

The expectations have not changed. The markers have not changed. The standard has not changed. Only the Health and Movement Science content is new. 

Your Health and Movement Science students know the content.
So why are they still losing marks?

With Health and Movement Science Trials, Year 11 yearly exams and the HSC just around the corner, this episode unpacks what actually separates a strong Health and Movement Science response from an average one.

Kelly Bell from The Learning Network shares what 16 years of HSC marking and more than 40,000 student responses have taught her about the three mistakes students make in the HSC. Surface level content. 

None of these are new problems.

They have been showing up in PDHPE and CAFS marking for over two decades and they are showing up in HMS right now.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why content alone will only ever get your students part way there
• How to take your teaching wide and deep instead of skimming the surface
• Why the Glossary of Key Words is the unsung hero of HSC success

The expectations have not changed. The markers have not changed. The standard has not changed. Only the Health and Movement Science content is new. 

Your students know the content. So why are they still losing marks?

It's rarely knowledge. It's the verb. A student who can define stroke volume and list the principles of training still drops marks when they describe a question that said analyse, or explain one that asked them to evaluate. Same Health and Movement Science content, wrong job.

With 2026 the first HSC under the new Health and Movement Science syllabus and no past papers to benchmark against, the key word is the clearest signal your students have about what a marker wants. This episode breaks down what separates an Explain from an Analyse, why a conclusion isn't a judgement and the two confusions that cost marks in every focus area for Health and Movement Science. Plus an activity you can run tomorrow to make the difference visible in your students' own writing.

Take the guesswork out at thelearnnet.com/hms.

Your Health and Movement Science students know the content. So why aren't the marks landing?

You've seen it. Your Health and Movement Science students write a full page and get three out of six. They describe when the question said analyse. They talk about "a sport" without ever naming one. And when you hand the paper back, they tell you all the things they meant to say.

After 16 years of HSC marking, I can tell you it's almost never the knowledge.

It's four things Health and Movement Science students do the moment the paper is in front of them and every one of them is teachable before October.

In this episode I'm naming four common mistakes I have been seeing Health and Movement Science students make and what to do about each one.

Everything you need to fix them is already built and waiting inside The HMS Membership: thelearnnet.com/hms

Ever stood on the oval on a Wednesday, 28 kids in front of you and thought "I have no idea if I am teaching this properly"?

You are not alone. And you are not the problem.

Whether every primary teacher likes it or not, PDHPE is one of our KLAs. 

But just because PDHPE has link to sport doesn't mean you discount it. 

Whether you a primary teacher or primary PE specialist in NSW, the new K-6 PDHPE syllabus is here and we are about to teach it. 

For the last 150 years PE has had a bad rap in NSW, but we are here to change that with you. 

This episode provides key changes and shifts from the 2018 to the 2024 K-6 PDHPE syllabus. 

The BIG message is this: Fundamental Movement Skills are the backbone to effective PE. 

If you want resources, ideas and activities to teach them explicitly: 

If you are looking for support in NSW 
head to thelearnnet.com/primary

Outside of NSW? Across the globe
head to thelearnnet.com/pe