Policy, Provision and Administration of Sport. The Pursuit of Excellence.

1. Policy, Provision and Administration of Sport. The Pursuit of Excellence.

2. By the end of this section you will be able to: • Understand the influence of various organisational agencies involved • Identify organisations initiatives and strategies • Identify potential problems associated with high level sport • Consider ethical issues in high level sport such as corruption • Analyse professional sport as a business

3. What is Sporting Excellence? A dictionary definition is ‘a state of exceptional merit or quality’. We will be looking at the moral debate about whether pursuing excellence for the best is unfair to the rest. An analysis of current political views on policies regarding elite sport.

4. What do you need to reach the excellence level of sports performance? • There are 3 categories of things that are required to allow performers to achieve excellence in their sport. • Policy – Sport must be a government priority to have the maximum chance of achieving excellence. • Provision – There must be sufficient facilities and coaches. • Administration – There must be initiatives set up to promote excellence in sport.

5. Policy Policy includes government initiatives and government support. Political ideology, or dominant beliefs and values, determine policy.

6. The best example of this is the German Democratic Republic in the 1970’s and 80’s. Their government pursued Olympic medals at the expense of everyone else to gain recognition in the world. Who is in charge of the UK’s success in sport? Is the government directly involved?

7. Traditionally the government have left the governing bodies to run their own sports believing that sport and politics did not mix. The governing bodies also wanted to keep control of their sports. More recently this ideology has changed. Disappointing performances in the 1992 and 1996 prompted politicians most notably John Major to show greater interest.

8. With extensive consultation with Sport England, the Conservative government published their strategy for improving Sporting Excellence in the UK in 1995. This was callled Sport: Raising the Game • This mainly involved channelling a large amount of financial aid, mainly from Lottery funds. • This also lead to the introduction of Sports Colleges in the UK.

9. Provision What do performers need in order to reach their potential? Specialist sports schools and sports colleges fulfil the main aspects. Best training venues Security Best facilities Support Highly qualified coaches Funding

10. They also need: Nutritionists Sports Scientists Psychologists Physiotherapists Mentors to guide them on personal and career issues

11. The UK has a decentralised system of sports administration What does this mean? • Grass roots clubs and local associations are self governing, with central government providing very little in terms of overall sporting policy What could be the positives and negatives of having a decentralised system?

12. UK Sport (www.uksport.gov.uk) UK sport is responsible for developing elite sport in the UK. It is funded by the government and distributes National Lottery money to support excellence. Specifically it: • Identifies sporting policies for the UK as a whole • Supports our best performers through the World Class Program • Oversees the UK Sports Institute • Promotes international status by attracting major sporting events, for example World Cups

13. The United Kingdom Sports Institute (UKSI) The idea of an institute was outlined in the Sport: Raising the Game policy The aim of the UKSI is to provide Britain’s best sportsmen and women with everything they need to win at international level

14. The original idea of the UKSI was to be a British Academy of sport which was initially intended to be similar to the academy system in Australia. £120 million of Sport England Lottery money is earmarked to develop facilities at Englands network centres. The main centres are at Lilleshall, Loughborough, Bath, London, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester.

15. (www.sportengland.org) Sport England has 9 regional offices whose staff work closely with local authorities, NGB’s and other national and regional organisations concerned with sport.

16. Sport England is responsible for: • Developing and maintaining the infrastructure of sport in England • Distributing National Lottery Funds • And aims to get • More People involved in sport • More Places to play sport • More Medals through higher standards of performance

17. http://www.sportengland.org/about_sport_england Look at this website • More People: • Over the years there have been several campaigns to encourage mass participation. • Today this is divided into 3 elements • Active Schools • Active Sports • Active Communities

19. Active Schools • Used to be called National Junior Sports Programme • Aims to provide every school child the opportunity to learn skills and to participate in the sport of their choice • It includes: • Activemark and Sportsmark, awards which are given to primary and secondary schools that reach targets for PE in school and in the community.

20. Coaching for teachers • The TOPS Programme • Sportsearch

21. Active Sports Used to be called the Champion Coaching Project in the 1990’s • Aims to help young people to achieve more from their chosen sport • Sport England has targeted 9 sports through which it hopes to encourage more young people to take part in, improve in and benefit from extra curricular sport

22. Active Communities Project • Has emerged from the ‘Sport for All’ campaigns of the last 30 years. • Aims to get more people from all communities, especially from minority or disadvantaged groups, to have the opportunities to take part in regular physical activity.

23. Sports Development Officers (SDO’s) work in communities • ‘Sports Action Zones’ have been created and targeted • The ‘Active Communities Development Fund’ is a funding programme to increase participation among • Ethnic Communities • Women and Girls • People with Disabilities • People on Low Incomes

24. More Places • Sport England wants efficient management of the right facilities in the right places. • They • Plan – by identifying the needs of the area and the best possible location for facilities • Develop – To make sure that their objectives are effectively met. • Design – To make sure that the facility is suitable for the intended purpose

25. More Medals In conjunction with UK Sport, Sport England supports elite performers in the pursuit of excellence. It does this through the: • English Institute of Sport Network • National Sports Centres (Bisham Abbey, Holme Pierrepoint, Lilleshall, Crystal Palace and the National Velodrome in Manchester)

26. World Class Programme– Which provides lottery funding to outstanding performers to help with training and preparation.

27. Sports Coach UK • Most coaches in this country are volunteers who do not have the time or finances to keep up to date with their qualifications. • Sports Coach UK are solely dedicated to providing education and continuous professional development at all levels of coaching. • Their main objectives include: • supporting individual coaches by offering workshops and resources. • working with other sporting organisations. • providing a network of Coaching Development Officers within England • Producing a quarterly publication called ‘Faster Higher Stronger’ • Running workshops and training sessions for coaches. • Running the ‘coaching for teachers scheme’