Responding to rapid advances in communication, changes in the way adults learn and shifts in volunteering patterns, the ASC undertook a major review of community-level coaching and officiating in Australia. The review focussed on the need to support the 500,000 coaches who deliver sport at the community level.

The review and subsequent industry consultation highlighted the need for a paradigm shift to ensure that community coaches and officials received the training they need to do their jobs.  It also identified that accreditation was important, but sports also needed to support the large numbers of coaches and officials that volunteered their time and didn’t want accreditation.

From the recommendations of the review, the ASC has provided NSOs with toolkits that guide them through developing coaching and officiating frameworks and training programmes that meet the needs of their workforce and participants. The step-by-step approach helps sports to understand their coach and official workforce and their participants, enabling them to tailor a suite of support and learning approaches to meet their needs. This includes accreditation, but also online learning and more informal approaches at the club level.

The AASC programme closed on 31 December 2014 after a successful 10-year period that had a significant impact on the Australian sporting sector.

The programme stretched across all states and territories, reaching two million students in more than 6,000 schools and OSHCS over that time.

The programme also introduced the Playing for Life[4] philosophy in one quarter of Australian primary schools and trained more than 65,000 coaches.

Each semester, more than 190,000 children took part in AASC. The programme included sports as diverse as soccer, judo and wheelchair basketball, all while promoting healthy and active lifestyles and developing a lifelong interest in sport.

Following the announcement of the Sporting Schools initiative in the May 2014 Federal Budget, the ASC began developing and piloting the $100 million initiative. Sporting Schools builds on the success of AASC and will involve more children, schools and coaches than ever before. The initiative is geared to get children active, engaged and having fun while teaching them positive leadership skills, physical skills and greater community engagement.

Sporting Schools will bring local sporting communities, schools and government agencies together to encourage sport participation across Australia.

The Sporting Schools pilot programme ran between January and June 2015, involving 10 NSOs and more than 500 primary schools across Australia.

Sporting Schools officially begins on 1 July 2015 and will partner with more than 30 NSOs to expand sporting opportunities for children before, during and after school hours at Australian primary schools.

As part of the ASC’s participation game plan Play.Sport.Australia., the ASC developed a new participation investment model for NSO funding. The model is based on a categorisation approach and framework where investments to NSOs are prioritised based on their capability of leading participation growth.

This new framework aims to provide a simpler, more consistent and transparent approach to participation funding. Categorisation is based on participation data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and data gathered through the ASC’s Annual Sports Performance Review.

Future categorisation will be informed by Annual Sports Performance Review participation data and the new ASC sector-wide national AusPlay survey.

Provide targeted investment to NSOs to achieve measurable participation outcomes

The ASC provided funding to 58 NSOs to achieve participation outcomes in 2014–15.

To provide a simpler, more consistent and transparent approach to participation funding the ASC also developed a new participation investment model.

This new model will be implemented from 1 July 2015.  

Establish and implement an annual participation research and information programme to measure sport participation and provide information to assist NSOs to make informed decisions about participation

Initial aspects of design have been undertaken including consultation with a range of sport sector representatives to better understand participation data needs, identify major issues or gaps, and inform reporting outputs to maximise the survey’s usefulness.

The scope for the ASC’s annual national participation data collection tool, to be known as the AusPlay survey, has been defined. The survey will collect data on sport and selected active recreation activities with an annual sample size of 20,000 for adults and approximately 5,000 for children.

The procurement phase has been delayed, preventing implementation this year. The AusPlay survey is now expected to be designed in the second half of 2015 and field work expected to begin in late 2015.

Implement the Sporting Schools initiative

The AASC programme was successfully closed on 31 December 2014.

Transition to the new Sporting Schools programme is complete with key milestones of web-based registrations and grant applications going live in February and May 2015 respectively.

A transition programme was implemented in term 2 of 2015 to help 1,588 schools that had been involved in the AASC programme move to Sporting Schools and 32 NSOs establish new partnership arrangements.

Sporting Schools programme delivery officially begins in July 2015.

Establishment of benchmark participation data to measure the percentage of the Australian population participating in organised sport (traditional or social) with an NSO or affiliate

With the delay in the implementation of the AusPlay survey, the target of establishing benchmark participation data has not been achieved this year. Work will continue to establish this benchmark data in 2015–16. In the interim, the ASC will continue to use ABS participation data and data gathered through the ASC’s Annual Sport Performance Review.

80 per cent of priority participation NSOs[5] growing their participation base

27 of the 35 priority participation NSOs (80 percent) grew their participation base in 2014-15.

80 per cent of key sport partners agree the ASC has demonstrated effective leadership of the sport sector

88 per cent of key sport partners agree the ASC has demonstrated effective leadership of the sport sector.

80 per cent of key sport partners agree the ASC has effectively shared knowledge and expertise in sport

96 percent of key sport partners agree the ASC has effectively shared knowledge and expertise in sport.