Infrastructure
The first two workstrands within the national PE, School Sport and Club Links Strategy have created — from September 2006 — a national school sports infrastructure by building a network of 402 Sports Colleges and 450 School Sport Partnerships.
Sports Colleges
Sport is one of ten specialisms within the Specialist Schools programme. The programme helps schools, in partnership with private sector sponsors and supported by additional Government funding, to establish distinctive identities through their chosen specialisms (i.e. sport) and achieve their targets to raise standards. Any maintained secondary school in England can apply for specialist status (and some maintained special schools can also apply). Specialist status is guaranteed for all schools that meet the standard to enter the programme.
The vision of Sports Colleges is to raise standards of achievement in physical education and sport for all their students across the ability range leading to whole school improvement. They are regional focal points for promoting excellence in physical education and community sport, extending links between families of schools, sports bodies and communities, sharing resources, developing and spreading good practice and helping to provide a structure through which young people can progress to careers in sport and physical education. Sports Colleges are expected to develop a visible sports ethos throughout the school and within their local community which inspires their students.
There are 402 designated colleges (including 14 academies with a sports focus).
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Click here for more information on the specialist schools programme including guidance on how schools can apply to become a Sports College.
School Sport Partnerships
School Sport Partnerships are families of schools that received additional funding from the Government to come together to enhance sports opportunities for all.
Each partnership is individual. But in developing new partnerships and expanding existing partnerships we are promoting a partnership model (the diagram sets this out).
There are 450 partnerships across England encompassing all maintained schools in England.
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Email ystinfo@lboro.ac.uk to find out what is happening in your area.
Typically Partnerships will:
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Be clustered around a Specialist Sports College and managed by a full-time Partnership Development Manager, whose role is to strategically develop and manage the partnership.
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Include around eight secondary school partners each of which appoints a School Sport Coordinator (an existing teacher from the PE department) who is released from the timetable for two days a week to work with their cluster of primary schools to develop after school activities and links with the local community and sports clubs.
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Include around 45 primary or special school partners (clustered in families of five around the sports college and secondary schools) each of which appoints a Link Teacher who is released from the timetable for 12 days each year to help develop subject knowledge and leadership and to work with other schools in the partnership.
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For every two secondary schools the partnership is able to appoint a Specialist Link Teacher (an additional qualified PE teacher) to fill the gaps created by releasing the School Sport Coordinators.
Each partnership receives a ring-fenced three year grant. The typical partnership (i.e. a partnership exactly the same as the above model) receives a grant of £270 000 per year. Smaller partnerships receive a little less where those with more schools than the model receive more. The grant pays for the above posts and teacher release. Partnerships are also encouraged to find some additional funding from other sources (for example sponsorship) but this is not a condition of receiving the grant. The Big Lottery Fund has also given each partnership an additional grant — on average £75 000 over three years — to kick start additional out of hours sports activities designed to widen participation.
The overall aim of the partnerships is to help schools to enable their pupils do spend at least two hours each week on high quality PE and school sport.
Competition Managers
The quality and amount of competitive school sport is rising year on year. Whilst that's a solid base we also know many more children would like the chance to compete. Therefore the Prime Minister announced in December 2004 that from this September we would begin to add new Competition Managers into the network of School Sport Partnerships.
The first 20 took up post in September 2005 working
in five pilot areas. Their role is to plan, manage and implement a
programme of inter-school competition across their school sport partnership and
against others. They will also reach out into national governing body
school sports competitions. A second wave of 42 managers are taking up
post during the autumn term 2006 working in small teams across school
sport partnerships. The commitment the Prime Minister gave — in
December — was to have at least 90 Competition Managers in place by
2007. Subject to the next spending review the aim is to have a manager in
each school sport partnership by 2010.
Published: 20 November 2006
