CIMSPA Accreditation awarded to Sport Coaching at Solent

BSc (Hons) Sport Coaching is pleased to have gained professional recognition through endorsement by CIMSPA, the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity.

The course has been endorsed by CIMSPA to the following professional standards:

• Coach. 
• Working in a community environment.
• Working in the high-performance environment.
• Safeguarding and protecting children (technical specialism).

Students who graduate from the course by passing the specific core modules will be eligible for CIMSPA membership in recognition of all of these standards.

The CIMSPA Professional Standards Framework outlines occupations and job roles within the sport and physical activity sector, by defining what knowledge and skills an individual must understand and demonstrate to undertake a particular role.

These standards have been used in the development of BSc (Hons) Sport Coaching, ensuring the degree has been designed to meet the needs of the workforce and allowing employers to easily assess the skills graduates have gained.

Course Leader Adam Lewis explained the significance of this endorsement. “This is crucial for both students and employers to know that our graduates have the skills, knowledge and experience they need to meet the demands of working in industry. CIMPSA worked with employers to define the standards that graduates should achieve and we made sure the modules of our new course aligned to those standards. Our CIMSPA-endorsed degree ensures our students are real-world ready”.

The Sport Coaching course has been carefully designed to introduce students to a broad spectrum of topics, all vital to developing well-rounded coaches - ready for employment.

Students can study a range of highly practical and experiential modules which open up their opportunities for employment and future specialisms - such as sports development, community coaching, performance coaching and even PE teaching.

For example, students will learn about sport development and becoming a socially aware coach, learning about the issues that sports participation can help to tackle. From this, they will have the chance to apply their knowledge through coaching in the community, developing and taking part in initiatives to get more people involved in sport at the grassroots level.

As students progress, they will also experience coaching children, allowing them to pursue an interest in creating their own youth sports camps, working in sports academies or to pursue a career in teaching Physical Education.

Along with this, students will also learn about coaching athletes with performance improvement goals. This can lead to exciting careers working at the front-line of coaching for medal-winning success.

Richard Millard, Vice Chair of CIMSPA said, “On behalf of the Sport and Physical Activity Sector Professional Development Board, we congratulate Solent University in achieving CIMSPA endorsement for BSc (Hons) Sport Coaching. We are delighted to see the employer-developed Professional Standards have been included enabling the development of work ready graduates”.