Osian Williams is the Climbing Higher Programme Manager for Conwy County Borough Council’s Education Department.
As the deadline fast approaches for Welsh schools across Wales
The benefits of taking part in the School Sport Survey is that schools will get an in depth report of how many children are taking part in sport and physical recreation. So from a school perspective they’ll see how healthy their kids are.
They’ll also be able to get evidence of their school’s overall wellbeing.
"Linking with the new Estyn inspection process, the results of the survey can contribute to exemplifying pupil and whole school wellbeing, which are integral parts of the Estyn framework."
In terms of Conwy Council’s planning, here within Sports Development, without the data available we wouldn’t know where we needed to focus our efforts the most. Without the survey we can’t plan or shape our programmes and it becomes a guessing game.
This level of data lets us make informed decisions and gives us a very clear picture, within Conwy itself and within the areas of deprivation, of where we need to focus our resources the most.
We have been having partnership meetings with all the schools in our cluster and have made sure that the Survey is on the agenda. Also School Improvement Officers have raised the Survey with Head Teachers to help get them more engaged. That’s been very useful because we have had lots of calls from Heads asking for more information.
I’ve been undertaking that liaison role with schools directly but we have offered the services of 5x60 Officers if schools need further help. So far we have found that no schools have needed that assistance, which is encouraging.
"The feedback that we’ve had has indicated that a lot of schools can see the value of having their own school report. Yes, there was an acknowledgement that a lot of work was needed but the outcome was considered so beneficial that it outweighed the time expenditure."
Going forward it would be good to have training for local authorities prior to next year’s survey. We could then point people in the right direction and train school staff to see in advance what the survey looks like, so that it becomes a less time consuming process for pupils during class time.
The deadline for survey entries is 20 July. For more details about the school sport survey visit: http://www.sportwales.org.uk/research--policy/our-surveys/school-sport-survey-2011.aspx.
