The annual School Sport Coordinators (SSCo) Conference for 2008 was held at Blackburn Rovers Football Club, Ewood Park, Red Rose Suite on Tuesday 12 February 2008. The conference brought together SSCO’s from across Lancashire for training and networking opportunities.
Based around the 5 hour ambition and the 7 outcomes for School Sports Partnerships (SSP's), the conference aimed to offer training opportunities and follow up workshops to give the opportunity to produce a usable toolkit based around good practices from local SSP’s. This year’s programme was divided into the following two areas:
- Youth Sport Trust and the 5 Hour Offer
- The 7 Outcomes for School Sports Partnerships
James Bacjer from Youth Sport Trust was present to talk about the challenges of the 5 hour offer. Following this, the SSCO's had the opportunity to discuss the 5 hour offer within their SSP as well as a feedback session in which each SSP had the chance to express their views to the whole group.
The afternoon workshops were based around the 7 outcomes with delegates chosing a theme from below:- High Quality PE
- Out of School Hours
- Informal Activities
- Competition and Performance
- Behavior and Attitude
- Attainment and Achievement
- Community
Each outcome was discussed in depth highlighting models of good practice linked to the 7 outcomes. This culminated in SSCO's working collaboratively on the production of a toolkit highlighting good practice from the Lancashire SSP network. Three post workshop support sessions have been planned for each working group (made up of 3 to 4 SSCO’s from each workshop group) to develop their part of the toolkit.
The SSCO's really got involved in the afternoon sessions and many of them volunteered to help with the development of the project toolkit.
One of the main highlights of the conference was a motivational address hosted by the Olympic swimming medalist and BBC Radio 5 Live Olympic Correspondent Steve Parry. The address was truly inspirational and gave every SSCO a great lift after such a busy day.