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13 Apr 2016
Sport England to cease funding for SkillsActive
BY
Jak Phillips
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Jennie Price's organisation Sport England is about to undertake a full review of its partnerships
Sport England’s funding to SkillsActive – the owner of fitness professional register REPs – has ceased and its partnership is under review as the quango moves forward with implementing the recommendations of the government’s new sports strategy. Despite having been a national partner of Sport England, SkillsActive’s relationship with the body appeared to be in jeopardy when December’s Sporting Future strategy charged Sport England to work with REPs rival CIMSPA to deliver a single set of skills standards for the physical activity sector.
A Sport England spokesperson confirmed to Health Club Management that its funding to SkillsActive has now ceased, with the April-March 2015/16 agreement between the two organisations shortly to conclude and no extension planned. They added that a full review of Sport England’s partnerships – including that with SkillsActive – is about to take place.
The spokesperson said: “We are currently gathering the insight – a lot of which will be primary – in order to build a new workforce strategy on solid foundations and customer need. This is an ongoing process which will take us into the summer as we market map the sector demand and supply.”
They added that CIMSPA already receives Sport England funding to professionalise and improve the skills of those in the industry and a review of this future partnership is already underway.
The past 24 months has seen a period of intense debate over the direction of workforce development in the physical activity sector, with several big name employers calling for change in the form of new skills standards being established under CIMSPA.
As the sector skills council for Active Leisure, Learning and Wellbeing, SkillsActive had been in charge of overseeing skills standards for exercise qualifications at Levels 2 and 3, until the closure of the Qualification and Credit Framework (QCF) and the introduction of the new Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF). At this point, said leisure employers – together with CIMSPA and ukactive – wrote to Sport England to express dissatisfaction over the current quality of newly-qualified fitness professionals and called for sector skills and development to be brought solely under the remit of CIMSPA.
One of the signatories of the letter, 1Life managing director Neil King, said at the time: "This is a huge opportunity to rectify a confusing and vague system by bringing all of the industry's learning and development needs under the umbrella of the Chartered Institute.”
Having won backing from employers and the government, CIMSPA is currently building its capacity and has recently unveiled plans for its own version of the REPs accreditation register, with more details of this to follow shortly.
Meanwhile, SkillsActive last week announced that 2016 will be a “year of transformation” for REPs. Responding to online rumours that REPs was in trouble, the organisation said there was no truth in speculation that it was about to close and insisted that it is “going strong.”
The organisation has today (13 April) announced that it will team up with sports coach UK to run REPs, although further details of this collaboration have yet to be released.
SkillsActive has been approached for comment on the future of its relationship with Sport England.
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