Young Leader Award - How Does It Work?

Over the last few years, Sports Leaders UK has been aware of a demand for leadership material from those working with younger children. Practitioners have seen first hand the tremendous benefits for people involved with our existing awards and have begun to realise the potential for young people below the age of 14.

The Young Leader Award is a programme of leadership training for young people between the ages of nine and 13 that promotes them working with younger children, teaching leadership skills through a range of games and activities. The Young Leader Award has been designed for use in a variety of different delivery settings, including primary and secondary schools, uniformed organisations and sports and community groups.

The award responds to the individual needs of each organisation and its Young Leaders through a flexible, differentiated programme. The resource pack has been written in an easy to follow format and therefore it is not necessary for people who wish to deliver this award to come on training, or to have specific sports/PE qualifications. However an interest in physical activity and leadership is important. The award focuses on specific skills such as giving instructions, the organisation of people and equipment and the use of space. Rather than breaking leadership down into its constituent parts, the award teaches these topics through a practical, activity based, holistic approach. In this way, the Young Leaders 'learn by doing' and, by the end of the course, will not only have the confidence and ability to lead others but will also have knowledge and experience of an extensive range of games and activities.

The Young Leader Award follows the well known STEP principle which encourages Young Leaders to make decisions surrounding the Space, Task, Equipment and organisation of People in order to become successful leaders.

There is no set time in which the course must be delivered. The timings of each aspect, and of the course as a whole, will vary from one organisation to the next and with this in mind it will be up to the course tutor to decide upon a timescale that is best for them. We suggest approximately six to 10 hours of delivery time to cover the content of this award.

The Young Leader Award is managed in a slightly different way to our existing awards. You do not have to become an Approved Assessment Centre (AAC) and there is no AAC or learner fee. Instead there is a one off payment (see fees & charges), which covers:

• The Tutor Resource Pack which includes everything you need to run the course.
• A CD-Rom with games cards, worksheets and resources sheets, all of which can be adapted by the tutor to suit your needs specifically*.
• 100 certificates which will be allocated to your learners as and when they complete the course.

Please Note - Although you will be allocated 100 learner certificates when you purchase the Young Leader Award, we do not send these certificates to you directly. Your allocation is held by Sports Leaders UK and you draw down certificates from this allocation as and when a cohort of learners complete the course. Fill in the Certificate Request Form on the CD-Rom and send it back to Head Office to draw down your certificates.

Once you have used up all 100 certificates you can purchase more by filling in the Certificate Re-order Form. Certificates are available in bundles of 30, 50 or 100.

*In order to create a CD rom that could be adapted by the tutor simply and quickly, we have left the majority of the documents in Microsoft Word format. This means that the worksheets, questions sheets and most resources have been saved on the disk in one document. Make sure that you scroll down to find the page(s) you need.