____________________________________________________________ School Games Kitemark - Final Report - Year 2 (2012-13) December 2013 ____________________________________________________________ Submitted to: Natasha O'Flaherty Sport England Submitted by: Sport Industry Research Centre Sheffield Hallam University A118 Collegiate Hall Collegiate Crescent Sheffield S10 2BP (0114) 225 5919 Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................. ii 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 2 THE SELECTION OF SCHOOLS FOR INDEPENDENT VALIDATION .............. 2 2.1 The Validation Process ..................................................................................... 3 3 THE COHORT OF KITEMARK SCHOOLS ......................................................... 4 3.1 Headlines ...................................................................................................... 4 3.2 The validation process in greater detail ......................................................... 5 3.3 Outcomes of the independent validation process.......................................... 6 3.4 2012-13 school year compared with 2011-12 ............................................... 8 3.5 Concluding comments ................................................................................... 9 4 KEY ISSUES ..................................................................................................... 10 4.1 SGO Engagement with Kitemarking ............................................................ 10 4.2 Causes of failure ......................................................................................... 15 4.3 Potential for Progression ............................................................................. 17 4.4 Driving Volume ............................................................................................ 19 4.4.1 SGO Work plans ................................................................................... 19 4.4.2 Changes to Kitemark Criteria ................................................................ 21 4.4.3 Longer term considerations to the criteria............................................. 22 5 RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION ......................................................... 23 APPENDICES .......................................................................................................... 25 Appendix 1: The list of 300 schools validated ....................................................... 25 Appendix 2: The validation pro-forma ................................................................... 31 Appendix 3: Colour coded rating of schools against criteria ................................. 38 Appendix 4: Reasons for 'failure' at higher levels of award ................................... 42 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Kitemark award scheme is administered by the Youth Sport Trust and enables schools in England to assess themselves against various criteria to achieve a Bronze, Silver or Gold award. The second year of the validation programme (2012-13) took the form of a fully independent validation process. Applications There are 23,109 schools and colleges in England eligible to apply for a Kitemark award (as long as they have activated School Games accounts), of which 67% are primary schools; 14% are secondary schools and 19% are in other categories. Activated accounts with the School Games website stood at 15,318 at the end of the 2012-13 school year, an increase of 84% (8,321) on the previous school year. All activated schools have the opportunity to apply for a School Games Kitemark award and in the 2012-13 school year 2,762 (or 18% of activated schools) made an application, of which 84% were successful in their online applications and 16% were unsuccessful. The independent validation programme saw the validation of 300 schools across 150 SGO areas. The validation visits revealed that 94% provided satisfactory evidence to support an award and 6% did not and consequently failed. SGO engagement A relatively small percentage of SGOs generate a disproportionately high number of award applications. Of the 451 SGO regions in England, 379 (84%) submitted at least one Kitemark application and the remaining 72 (16%) made no applications at all. This was a noticeable improvement on the 2011-12 school year in which it was found that 64% of SGOs made at least one application. Key points SGO engagement with Kitemarking has improved in 2012-13 relative to 2011-12 with 84% of SGOs now making at least one Kitemark award application. Some SGOs are more productive in Kitemarking applications than others, the bottom 25% generate 4% of all applications whereas the top 25% generate 58%. There are significant differences between Local Organising Committee (LOC) areas in terms of schools activated, applications made and success rate. There are also significantly different levels of engaged SGOs within LOC areas with scores averaging 84% but ranging from 50% to 100%. Causes of failure Key Points Almost all schools that failed (99%+) were unable to answer one or more of the four Bronze level questions positively, with only one school failing on a prerequisite. A sizeable majority (76%) of failed schools did so on one criterion only and the remaining 24% failed on a combination of criteria. The most common reasons for failure were insufficient provision of sports at Level 1 (51%) and under achieving the criterion for 5% of pupils being involved in leading, managing and officiating sport (39%). Potential for schools to progress to a higher level of award Key Points There is potential for schools which currently hold awards to make progression in the future although some criteria will be more difficult to achieve than others. Notable sticking points include meeting the criteria for the requisite number of B and C teams, as well as involving pupils in leading, managing and officiating sport. Different types of school will face different challenges in order to progress. Most of the 100 upgrades made to the sample of 300 independently validated schools could be explained by errors on the application form against one or two criteria. It is clear SGOs have an important role in helping schools to plan for progression. Criteria changes and future applications The most significant change to the criteria is to the prerequisite that all schools applying for a Kitemark award should offer pupils at least two hours of PE during curriculum time each week. Feedback from SGOs suggested that this pre-requisite was often stopping schools from applying for the Kitemark award as some schools do not provide 2 hours of PE during curriculum time each week. In 2013-14, for the Bronze award schools that have an aspiration to provide 2 hours of PE can apply; at the Silver level 2 hours of PE should be provided to all pupils but this could be made up through a mix of curricular and extracurricular activity; and, for Gold level schools the 2 hours of PE during curriculum time only would remain in place. It is anticipated that this change will assist in driving up the number of applications for a Kitemark award in future years. Key points It is likely that the volume of applications for Kitemark awards will increase in the next year for two key reasons: 1) Engaging with the Kitemark award process has been built into SGOs’ work plans and early indications from the SGO annual delivery plans show that volume could grow by 146% to over 6,000 applications in 2013-14. 2) Changes to the criteria may remove barriers that have acted as a deterrent to applications in the past. Further thought is already being given to how the criteria can be improved in the future to make the Kitemark award more accessible and relevant to schools. 1 INTRODUCTION The Kitemark award scheme is administered by the Youth Sport Trust and enables schools in England to assess themselves against various criteria to achieve a Bronze, Silver or Gold award. Schools are able to apply for the award on an annual basis and awards are renewable annually. This report focuses on the independent validation of the programme, which was conducted by the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) between June and December 2013. In 2011-12 there were 1,659 applications for a Kitemark award, the validation programme for this period followed a retrospective approach and covered 100 schools across 72 School Games Organiser (SGO) areas. This inaugural validation programme aimed to assess the robustness of the award scheme as well as providing key learning and intelligence to improve the programme for the 2012-13 academic year. The second year of the validation programme (2012-13) took the form of a fully independent validation. Those schools which were selected for validation did not have their award confirmed until their validation visit had taken place and the evidence to support their applications had been reviewed. The application window for schools to apply for a Kitemark award for the 2012-13 period was open for almost four months (from Monday 3rd June 2013 to Friday 27th September 2013). During this period 2,762 schools (18% of those with activated accounts on the School Games website as of 27th September 2013) applied for a Kitemark award, of which 84% were successful in their online applications. This is an increase of 67% in applications compared with the 2011-12 academic year. The independent validation programme for the 2012-13 academic year commenced