Friday 8th August 2013

This year has of course been heavily dominated by the decision to give ring-fenced funding to each school, a decision which passes responsibility for the quality provision of PE & Sport into the hands of each head teacher.

Much debate has occurred to the merits of this and will continue to do so, but in the meantime we at Premier Sport continue to strive for excellent delivery across all products we deliver.

Independent Ofsted inspections on a percentage of our network give us a base line measurement to continually improve upon and of course, if these reach an average greater than most schools who utilise teaching staff for the provision of PE, then we have an even stronger political argument for delivering PE in curricular hours.

The fact is however, that each approach has its merits and a multi-agency partnership is the only way that we will improve on current and previous policies.

Attempts to professionalise the industry in which we work are materialising, with the new L3 award as a PE & School Sport Professional launched in association with AfPE and COMPASS in the last couple of weeks.

This has been driven by our industry and now removes many of the ridiculous barriers that we have faced previously, whilst ensuring graduates are more prepared than ever before to be fit for purpose for the environment in which they work.

More than ever, our staff have to be delivering measurable outcomes for schools to ensure they are delivering value for money.

I am sure that many providers, (including charities and commercial entities working in schools), will come un-stuck in the near future and be unable to reach the standards required or promised.

The knock on effect will be that more business will be available for those that ARE reaching the highest standards in the short / medium term, allowing more children to access high quality provision.

Concentrating on delivering quality will provide franchisees with business retention, as well as enhancing their reputation locally, which in turn will lead to increased business opportunities with other schools in the future.

Business for all of the franchisees that I have spoken to seems to be going through the roof and that brings different challenges.

We have always preached about working ON the business, not IN the business, and with more staff and more responsibility the analysis and management of your business becomes more important.

It is easy to be too busy to do certain tasks, unfortunately more often than not they are the ones that are most important. Analysing performance of events, staff, margins, cash-flow etc. are all more likely to ensure you are successful than wasting time delivering leaflets!

It's advisable to keep looking ahead so that you are prepared for recruitment, appraisal and new sales so that you don’t major on the minor things..

At Premier we understand that we have a responsibility to our customers to deliver quality services to young people. We also understand that our responsibility falls much wider than this. We acknowledge that by sharing our understanding and expertise about the positive effects physical activity, nutrition and first-rate coaching can have on young people, that we can make a positive change in society today; by helping people help themselves.

We are constantly looking for ways to engage with our stakeholders (children, communities, schools, government and corporate partners) to help them understand how increased physical activity not only improves health and wellbeing but also installs a sense of achievement, responsibility and leadership.

As the nation's leading sports coaching provider, we want to share our wealth of knowledge to inspire people to get involved and get active, this is why we are setting up our community sports programme.

Our community sports programme will incorporate all of the good stuff we do off the playing field. We will continue invest in the communities that we live and work in. We will put programmes in place to share and inspire young people and their families to become more active. We will also be considering the way we operate to reduce our impacts on the environment.

We are the first off the blocks to deliver such a programme in the UK which will not only instil a sense of passion for you and your employees but also, something to talk to our customers about to make us stand out from the crowd in a busy marketplace.

We're proud to say we have invested significantly in community initiatives across the UK with 6,000 FREE places made available to children on Premier Sport community activities equating to £90,000 of community investment. There's been over 200 primary schools receiving FREE Health & Physical Activity Days, inspiring 45,000 children to get active. This equates to over £30,000 of free sport for our nation's children.

"There's been a lot of debate whether we've managed to deliver the promised Olympic legacy, one year one from London 2012. This debate will continue to divide the country.

"Premier Sport's legacy programme was simple; to increase the opportunity for young people to participate in sport with direct investment in community initiatives. These statistics clearly demonstrate this has been delivered with further investment planned in 2013/2014."

Olympic Gold Medallist and Premier Sport Ambassador,
Duncan Goodhew