The future of sport and coaching in the UK - a brief overview

UK Coaching Certificate (UKCC)

The Government 'Plan for Sport' made a number of recommendations about the future strategic direction of coaching and coach education. It was agreed that a Coaching Task Force (CTF) should be established to move forward key areas of work.

One of the recommendations was:

• The implementation of a National Coaching Certificate at 5 levels (now 4). This would be set against the national standards and be a requirement for all National Governing Bodies (NGB's). The feasibility of linking this to a licence to practice.
  

It involves the standardisation of coaching awards focusing on competence and assessment and is set to go 'live' in Jan 2007.

The UK Coaching Certificate is made up of modules, some are generic coaching modules which all sports do and some are sport specific e.g. basketball.

Coaches can then progress in their development by taking the next level of award and have their knowledge updated by a system of Continuing Professional Development.

Coach awards will progress along an performance and a developmental path. For example, some coachs may want to progress from coaching recreational sessions through to league teams and maybe national teams and therefore need to work their way through the various levels of the UKCC with focus on performance. Other coaches may want to coach at one level only e.g. mini, but become an expert coach at this level. Therefore they would through the various levels of the UKCC with focus on development. In both cases the coaches would still need to renew their knowledge and practices to stay updated between coaching qualifications via CPD (continuing professional development). But their choice of CPD activites would be different due to their focus.

All practicing coaches will either have to take their next level qualification or update their current level on a regular basis if they wish to continue coaching.

In order to put this into place there needs to be a number of changes to the current coach education process. The SportscoachUK/1 st 4sport partnership is in charge of training provision for UKCC.

To support the theme of standardisation, competence and assessment there will be 4 main roles:

Coach Educators who deliver the coaching award courses. They must be qualified by undertaking training from scUK.

Coach Assessors who assess the newly qualified coaches. They must also be qualified by undertaking training from scUK. This could be someone who is also qualified as a Coach Educator, but not necessarily. You can be one, or other, or both.

Coach Verifiers who moderate delivery and assessment to ensure it is consistent across the board. Qualified by scUK.

Coach Mentors to support newly qualified and current coaches. Qualified by scUK.

The UKCC is being phased in through various sports, basketball is in the second phase and are just completing their sports specific content for level 3.

If you are a current coach or coach tutor please be aware that these changes will affect you, our sport and the vocation of coaching in a very positive manner. You will need to update your qualifications at some point in the future. If you wish to become qualified as tutor or assessor (you will not be able to run any courses if you aren't qualified) then please click here

In the mean time the BAW will continue with their current system of qualification, if you wish to attend or hold a course please contact us

For more information visit www.sportscoachuk/org/ncc , www.culture.gov.uk/sport and click on Coaching Task Force Report, or www.ukcoachingcertificate.org