Andrew Honey Jones, Active Young People Manager at Caerphilly County Borough Council, has been busy encouraging schools to complete the School Sport Survey – Sport Wales’ biggest ever census of school sport.
Here he describes his nine point step-by-step plan to ensure that schools in Caerphilly are on board:
· First of all, I emailed all Headteachers to highlight the importance of the survey and how it fits in with the inspection framework. I also sent them the sample report so they could have a good idea of the data that would be collected.
· It’s a mistake to email the generic school email addresses. It’s also a mistake to send blanket emails. Be personal and your email will be less likely to end up in deleted items!
· In Caerphilly, sport sits in the Education & Leisure team so we work closely with School Improvement Teams We issue a weekly bulletin to all Headteachers so we used that to communicate the importance of the survey and asked them to get in touch if they required any assistance
· We also met with the Education Advisory Group so they could push it during their visits to the schools
· We’ve also offered to come in and administer the surveys. This helps the school spread the workload. Within an hour of that email being sent, 10 schools quickly responded. Now, we have 30 schools where we are going in to manage the survey process for them.
· Next week, we’re presenting at the Joint Headteacher meeting for all Headteachers – primary and secondary. This will be another opportunity to push the survey. We will highlight the schools that have already done it and hopefully that will encourage those that haven’t.
· We will also send the School Sport Survey updates to schools so they can see how they compare to others in their area
![]()
· We have also told schools that we will only support ActiveMarc Cymru applications if they complete the survey. In my opinion, you can only be recognised as a high performing school for sport if you understand the importance of collecting this information.
· My top tip is to get Headteachers on board. Their buy-in is absolutely critical.
For more information on the School Sport Survey visit http://www.schoolsportsurvey.org.uk/ Schools have just until the end of term to complete it.
