Community Conversations Follow-Up: Supporting Club Coaching and Development

The April session in the SOA’s monthly online Community Conversations series brought together club members from across Scotland to talk about coaching education and support. The session was introduced by Suzanne Robins-Bird, the SOA’s Coaching & Volunteer officer, with an open forum for questions and ideas submitted in advance as well as during the session.

The first issue raised was that for some clubs, a shortage of lead coaches is a real constraint on development work. This led into discussion about the coach qualification pathway and assessment requirements. Suzanne explained that with SOA qualifications accredited with SQA there are specific requirements around assessment to adhere to. Whilst no one’s a fan of paperwork, some core documents
are of course unavoidable to ensure for safe and effective coaching, and the written components of assessment are linked very much to the fundamental needs of delivering practical coaching, namely around session planning and risk assessments. That said, the coaching pathway is designed to include any and all club members who want to support their club in this way, and the starting point is the Coaching
Foundation training course. This is designed for those who want to contribute as assistants and is easy to access as a course of just 4 hours duration.  It covers the core concepts of good coaching and creating a positive learning environment.

Discussion moved to whether there could be any transferability of other SQA sport coaching qualifications (e.g., in kayaking, say) to allow fast-tracking, or whether more on-the-job foundation training via club sessions could be possible. Whilst there are merits to these suggestions, there are also constraints, in terms of both accreditation and also practical feasibility. It’s really important that coaches have a consistent training experience, and there is a lot of benefit from coming together as a cross-club
group to share experiences and build links within the orienteering coaching community that can then help with continuing to develop good practice.

Having a club lead coach is obviously of considerable value for ensuring members across all levels can progress (and is a BOF insurance requirement for coaching in more challenging areas or higher technical) – so clearly something for clubs to aspire to and support their members to achieve. However, Suzanne commented that where coaching is really focused only in more local areas and for lower Technical Difficulty levels, then those qualified as Club Coaches can deliver that.  Another question was around what routes exist now for sharing of coaching exercises and experience, across SOA coaches?  Suzanne outlined a number of SOA supports in place to help coaches network and share resources:

• Periodic Coach CPD online sessions – see regular coach emails
• In-person coach development days – see regular coach emails
• Mentoring – contact Suzanne to ask when the next training is
• SOA holds a repository of useful resources for all coaches to access,
  including some new session planning materials development recently by Judy
  Bell – All coaches have access but if you need the link contact Suzanne

Many thanks to Suzanne for convening the session, and thank you to all who
participated.