As I hope you are all aware by now, Clubmark is the national quality accreditation programme for community sports clubs with junior sections.
Originally created in 2002, KKP was asked to manage and drive the strategic development and operation of Clubmark in 2006 when the number of accreditations stood at 1,250.
(image) Since then, working closely with NGBs in particular, we have tightened up the process and raised the bar, at the same time injecting new impetus.
There are now more than 4,450 accredited clubs across more than 35 sports; plus a further 4,200 actively working towards achieving this recognised stamp of approval.
Key achievements include:
- Creating and managing a licensing process for all NGBs in the scheme. A diverse array of 30 sports; from cricket and rugby to canoeing and rowing, boxing and Aikido, are now licensed to award Clubmark.
- Widening impact by licensing CSPs to accredit clubs in sports with small NGBs that struggle to accredit clubs on a national basis (such as handball, lifesaving and ice skating).
- Managing the external verification process as a vehicle for quality assurance. We independently assess a quota of clubs across all sports and regions to evaluate its impact and confirm that the way NGBs award Clubmark is consistent and that it continues to be a robust, quality accreditation.
- Driving the Clubmark Advisory Group which has delegated responsibility to manage the strategic development and continuous improvement of the scheme.
- Branding - implementing and ensuring adoption and use of the distinctive new Clubmark brand.
- Improving marketing and communications; the regular Clubmark newsletter we introduced now has a 5,000 strong circulation reaching its target audience of accredited and working towards clubs as well as industry partners and stakeholders.
- Hosting and running the website as a central portal for information and best practice - this has registered more than 80,000 hits since inception in 2006.
- Development and delivery of training for assessors; over 350 people have attended the training since it was introduced in Summer 2007. These range from local authority SDOs to NGB regional and national managers. This has been crucial in maintaining consistency between sports and regions.
Future direction
KKP has, with the support of Sport England, NGBs and CSPs, taken the raw product and turned Clubmark into a robust, high quality, defensible scheme which has clear endorsement by wider stakeholders across the sector. Maintaining momentum is, however, vital.
Whole sport plans
The new Sport England strategy recognises sports clubs as core to people's experiences. It is committed to working with NGBs to develop an accessible, modern, sports club structure to drive up participation, improve satisfaction and retention and allow those with talent to fully develop. Clubmark is central to this and we have supported all 30 NGBs in the whole sport planning process, providing key information about present numbers and distribution of Clubmark accredited and working towards clubs together with growth targets for the four year period. Clubmark targets are incorporated in each NGB's whole sport plan submission.
Equity
Equity is a key facet of Clubmark and KKP together with the Advisory Group, is keen to do more to drive up standards in this area. We have developed a proposal to move from the rather static requirement for club members to attend a designated course to one which will require clubs to firstly understand and then be more active recruiting and retaining members from their locality. We are, at the same time, tuned into the desire not to over-burden already stretched volunteers. The process is being piloted with six NGBs and will be ready to implement as part of the award by April 2009. An additional benefit of tackling this issue is that the FA is closely involved and is now near to aligning Charter Standard with Clubmark, thus bringing accredited football clubs into the fold.
Delivering on the Government's agenda
It is inevitable that the momentum of 2012 will spawn a rise in the number of initiatives and programmes to get more people taking part in sport. One such is Sport Unlimited; the recently announced, Sport England managed scheme to invest £36 million in a nationwide drive to get more children and young people taking part in sport outside of school. There is clearly a synergy between this and Clubmark and we are being pro-active, supporting the multi-agency project team to develop a framework to ensure that such provision is made at ‘satellites' directly linked to Clubmark clubs and thus offers the same quality guarantees . This gives the reassurance of safety and quality of Clubmark for opportunities provided in local, convenient environments.
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This is just a snapshot. Now that the quality base of the scheme is completely embedded we can, with partners in NGBs and CSPs, go on to fully exploit the sports development benefits that it brings. Against the backdrop of policy change and economic uncertainty, our intention is to ensure that Clubmark continues to go from strength to strength; what better legacy will there be from 2012 than an extensive network of community clubs offering high quality sporting opportunities for young people.
For more information contact Clare MacLeod - clare.macleod@kkp.co.uk
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