Sport England: Evaluation of County Coaching programme

Because of our work: Sport England understood the positive impacts of its initiative and investment in coaching and was able to use that evidence to inform future programmes and changes in coaching.

Sport England is the arms-length body of government, responsible for growing and developing grassroots sport and getting more people active across England. Its strategy, Towards an Active Nation, sets out how it works with national and local partners to ensure everyone in England can benefit from sport and physical activity.

Over an 18-month period, Sport England invested £2million in 43 County Sports Partnerships (CSPs) to implement its strategy for Coaching an Active Nation. CSPs were given the freedom to try new approaches in engaging with new audiences to broaden the appeal of coaching.

This year, Hall Aitken was asked to evaluate the systemic change created by this investment and to identify how this can be sustained into the future.

Stage one: research and engagement. We carried out a full document review and then focussed on engaging with people involved in the CSPs’ activities. We conducted a web-based survey of CSP coaching contacts and 10 interviews with individuals from CSPs and Sport England. We also made four visits to develop cases studies. This evaluation took place over a six-week period from December 2017 to early 2018.

Stage two: positive findings. We identified that the investment had achieved three related areas of positive impact: greater partnership working; better community engagement and more time to learn and share.  Work with non-traditional bodies helped recruit more coaches and we estimated that 18,275 additional coaches have been supported since 2016.  CSP staff and stakeholders reported the programme is changing the culture, broadening the definition of coaches and increasing the emphasis on softer skills. 

Stage three: informing progress. The learning from this work was used by Sport England to guide their decision-making in changes to coaching support to CSPs.