Friday 27th February 2015

We would like to thank you for your response to the new social media course that we’re running in conjunction with The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

To ensure your business doesn’t miss out on this great opportunity to connect with YOUR customers, you need to register on the training course via the online shop NOW, spaces are running out fast. There is ONLY 30 spaces available for the first training course and these will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Since last week’s News Update, the marketing team have processed a huge surge for ‘Inspire to Engage’ literature. During the past month, we’ve over-printed and distributed half a million leaflets. Have you placed your order ready for Easter?

We will shortly be releasing new guidance around our PEG qualification structure and the importance of our Activity Professionals being suitably qualified for the delivery they carry out.

As a 1st4sport Accredited Centre we have been delivering the Supporting PE in School Sport Level 2 (PESS L2) qualification for over a year now and have had over 60 Activity Professionals already go through the qualification.

We caught up with Activity Professional David Gould who has recently completed his PESS L2.

After positive feedback and consultation with our 1st4sport External Verifier, the Skills & Compliance department’s recommendation that the enrolment age for the Multi Skills Level 2 Certificate be reduced from 17 to 16 years of age has been approved. Meaning that school leavers and your first year apprentices can now complete the course.

The law on workplace pensions has changed. Every employer with at least one member of staff now has new duties, including putting those who meet certain criteria into a workplace pension scheme and contributing towards it.

This is called automatic enrolment. It’s called this because it’s automatic for your staff – they don’t have to do anything to be enrolled into your pension scheme. But it’s not automatic for you. You need to take steps to make sure they’re enrolled. Please find attached the ‘how to guide’ from The Pensions Regulator.

Steve Girling invested significant time this week with Insight Financial Services, who have agreed to provide support to the network on auto enrolment for Company Pensions. Please see article for more info as this is soon to be a mandatory requirement for all employers.

After some months of development, we’re pleased to announce the new enhancements to the Planning Framework went live last week. You view the changes in this supporting document which is also available on the resources section under "Delivery".

In the process of making these changes ‘live’, we encountered an error which meant some of your ‘Learning Outcomes’ that you uploaded last week (16th-20th), may not have been saved.

If you or your Act Pro uploaded ‘Learning Outcomes’ to the ‘Pupil Assessments’ section last week, please make sure you check to see if these were saved correctly.

Apologies for any inconvenienced caused during this upgrade.

Over the past few weeks, Karl Fox has invested a number of hours creating an online training resource (launching soon) for Golden Mile licensees that can also be used to reinforce staff CPD and enhance their knowledge with a pass or fail format.

One of the main themes of #NTE15 was ‘STRUCTURE’. So, we’re pleased to share with you the success of Premier Sport’s East Norfolk franchise who recently appointed Ross Catchpole as Health & Physical Activity Coordinator.

As Health & Physical Activity Coordinator, Ross’ working timetable is a combination of coaching delivery and deployment of The Golden Mile’s strategic plan. Ross first objective was to maximise business within existing schools. As a result, he successfully sold 27 Base Line Measurement (BLM) day packages for £300 each, generating over £8k of income. As part of this package, it ensures 27 BLM guaranteed analysis meetings with the Head teacher. Statistical evidence shows that you’re more likely to convert sales when dealing with Head teachers so chances of success are greatly improved.

Frankie Worthington invested six hours this week studying licenses financial performance for this term. Good news - 78% of licensees are either on course or ALREADY exceeding their financial targets with a remarkable six weeks of this term still remaining.

With Stuart Handcock’s Premier Performing Arts business still in its early stages, his main areas of focus in year one was curricular dance contracts. He experienced rapid growth in the early stages which has continued over the past year. As a result, Stuart needed to spend more time working on his business and not in his business, reducing his teaching to three days a week.

Stuart’s two ‘free’ business days are spent dealing with business matters such as; contracts for new and existing schools, writing up and agreeing the contacts, recruiting new staff, planning lessons, assessing staff etc.

This week, members of the marketing team and Phil Gaffer spent eight hours working on the new Make Sport Your Business website and social media platforms, making a Premier Education Group business an even greater proposition for potential candidates - including for Activity Professionals whom wish to enrol on the passport scheme which is already proving popular!

Andy released his latest video blog (vlog) in last week’s Activity Professionals News Update. The theme of this short video was highlighting the importance of CPD.

Check it out and also make sure you send the YouTube link to your staff. These videos are a form of CPD for your staff.

Three years ago, franchisee Duncan Donnelly invested time and money in his own CPD by obtaining a tutor qualification with Sports Leaders UK. It wasn’t until this school year that Duncan committed some time into finding a way of utilising this qualification within his franchise.

Over to Duncan to tell you how he’s utilised his PlayMaker tutor qualification in his hub school...

We’re now at the halfway stage of the research pilot which we’re undertaking with the ukactive Research Institute and the Universities of Greenwich and Aberystwyth. The interim findings have been very interesting and positive, so much so the DoE now want to sit with us to discuss, the project, the impact and the potential. We’ve invested £24,000 in the project, which we believe will play a key role in our future development, which will influence not only our own strategies but that of government too.

Three children from Hollesley Primary School Suffolk have become the first children in the county to walk over 100 miles each, as part of The Golden Mile health and activity initiative at their school...and they are all part of the same family!

Sam Williams (age 10) Summa Williams (age 7) and Sacha Williams (age 5) have walked 168,124 and 139 miles respectively since November last year, around the schools’ Golden Mile Track. Every day, the three siblings will clock up Golden Miles before and after school.

This year will be no different to previous years as we continue to strengthen our relationship with key national press partners, like The Times. Not only will the brand grow even stronger nationally, this will inevitably increase exposure on a localised level as we drive readers to book onto your courses.

Here is an advert that featured in The Times last weekend.

Sales Meeting TOP TIP: if you have any first meetings with schools arranged and are not 100% sure of what the meeting format should be then these comments from a PEG member (made on Monday 23 February) may help:

‘It is amazing what 15 minutes of preparation could do to help me stay in control of the meeting and steer it in the right direction. All the opening lines we rehearsed were really useful and helped me to establish rapport with the PE coordinator. I actually did not have to talk as much as during the previous meetings! I managed to get an HPA day slot and a review meeting agreed.’

We’re still awaiting the last few remaining camp return forms from February half term. Don’t forget to submit your camp return form once your course has finished and any payments have been accounted for and uploaded onto the BMS.

Please email your form to Courtney so we can reconcile to the BMS and release any payment.

We thought you would find it useful to create a Weekly News Update archive housing previous newsletters from this academic year.

‘Read more’ to catch up on any news you may have missed.