“School plays an integral role in guiding young performers through their critical years of physical and mental development, and on to sustainable and appropriate pathways that allow them to realise their sporting potential as adults.”
Schools are vital to a young person’s development and as such can help guide young performers along the appropriate pathway for each individual to reach their potential. JAE Pillar 2 is about how schools can give useful and relevant guidance to the talented performer.
The performer pathway encourages a strong foundation in PE and fundamental skills followed by sampling a variety of sports. For most sports, talented performers specialise between the ages of 14 to 16 years. Early specialisation sports likes gymnastics and diving and early practising sports like table tennis and tennis differ and may require additional support from the school. Expert knowledge is best sourced direct from the NGB or from organisations like sports coach UK or UK Sport.
School to Club Links
Schools play an important role in guiding talented young performers into appropriate sports, clubs and academies. Strong relationships with local performance clubs and National Governing Bodies’ (NGB) development officers, from a range of sports, will provide valuable support to any G&T programme. By explaining the elements required to be successful in certain sports and sign posting the NGBs’ performance pathways, schools will encourage young people to take ownership of their talent journey.
To support this pillar a booklet called Talent Pathways has been produced which follows eight different pathways of talented performers from school to the top of sport. It offers useful advice for aspiring young performers. Go to www.ystdirect.org to find out more.
Talent Transfer
For some sports the talent pathway starts to narrow at certain stages, resulting in a number of talented performers being screened out. Schools and sports can play an important supportive role in guiding these young performers into other sports, which match their potential.
UK Sport has put together a variety of schemes to assist talent transfer and it is expected in future years that NGBs will work with the schools’ network, to provide talent transfer opportunities based around G&T programmes.
Learn more
Participant pathways – sports coach UK