If you work in a NSW primary school you already know the acronym. For everyone else: RFF — Release from Face-to-Face — is the award-protected planning time every classroom teacher is entitled to each week. While the teacher plans, marks and programs, someone else takes the class.
The question every principal has to answer is: who, and doing what?
The usual options
A casual teacher. Flexible, but expensive per hour, hard to book reliably, and the lesson content varies wildly with whoever walks in.
A specialist teacher on staff (music, language, library). Excellent where the school can staff it — but many schools can't fill every RFF block this way, and it adds permanent headcount.
An external provider. One provider, one invoice, the same faces every week — and the RFF block becomes a genuine specialist program rather than supervised time.
Why sport fits the RFF block so well
PDHPE is a learning area every primary school must deliver anyway. Covering RFF with a structured sports program solves two problems with one decision:
- Teachers get their full entitlement, reliably. Same provider, same timeslot, every week of term — no morning scramble for a casual.
- The school banks real PDHPE delivery. Not "the kids ran around" — a programmed unit with skill progressions, and evidence at the end of it.
What to demand from an RFF sports provider
The difference between an RFF program and expensive babysitting is documentation. A provider worth signing should hand you:
- A scope and sequence mapped to actual outcome codes (NESA K–10 PDHPE in NSW)
- Stage-specific assessment — baseline and post-unit skill checks
- Termly reports your PE coordinator can use, plus teacher comment banks for semester reports
- A compliance pack before the first session: insurance certificate, WWCC clearances, risk management plan
- Consistent, named coaches — children build confidence with adults they trust
If a provider can't produce those, what you're buying is casual cover at specialist prices.
What it looks like in practice
At Build Alpha Kids, RFF blocks run as multi-sport units — one sport block per term or rotations within it, matched to each stage from Kindergarten to Year 6. Your teachers walk out for their planning time; our coaches walk in with the equipment, the session plan and the assessment sheet. At the end of term, the school receives PDHPE reports and results in spreadsheet copy.
No extra staff to employ. No planning load on anyone. And students who count down to it.
Build Alpha Kids covers RFF blocks with curriculum-mapped sports programs in schools across NSW and Victoria. Request a quote or read more about how schools use us.