School Sport Partnerships (SSPs)

The School Sport Partnership (SSP) Programme is creating a national network of over 400 partnerships across the country. These are groups of schools that come together within a local area to improve the quality of teaching, coaching, and learning in PE and school sport and increase the proportion of children guided into clubs from schools. An SSP typically consists of a Specialist Schools College, around 8 secondary schools and around 45 feeder primary or special schools. With key staff located at each tier of the system ensuring integration of the work of the network through Sports Colleges, Secondary Schools and Primary Schools, SSPs should allow an efficient system of physical education and sport delivery in schools. The team of staff is made up of a Partnership Development Officer and Competition Manager in the Sports College, with School Sport Co-ordinators in each secondary school and Primary Link Teachers in each primary school. The role of this team is to enhance opportunities for young people to experience different sports, access high quality coaching and engage in competition.

The results of the 2005-06 School Sport Survey showed an increase in the number of schools providing Volleyball to their pupils. With the largest ever sample group attained for the survey (16,882 schools responding compared to 11,498 in 2004-05), a total of 28% schools have reported that they deliver Volleyball, up from 25% in 2004-05. This is a significant increase on previous years and given that this is the largest ever sample group surveyed, confirms Volleyball’s position as a popular and growing school sport. With numbers of schools affiliations to Volleyball England rapidly growing, and increases in numbers of Volleyball Clubs that are part of the Volley 1 (Clubmark) accreditation programme, numbers of school-club links should increase.

School Sport Partnership Model

Key:

PDM: Partnership Development Manager
Usually based in a Sports College and manages the development of the partnership and the links with other PE and Sport Organisations.

CM: Competition Manager
Currently being phased into the School Sport Partnership Structure the Competition Manager will be responsible for delivering the competition frameworks submitted by the different sport across all key stages in education.

SSCo: School Sport Co-ordinator
The role of the SSCo is to develop after-school and inter/intra-school competition and sporting opportunity within their school and family of primary schools.

PLT: Primary Link Teacher
Each primary/special school has a PLT whose role is to improve PE & Sport within the primary school.