"Coaches, supporting our athletes, are at the heart of our high-performance community and we firmly believe that a more diverse cohort of highly skilled coaches will help more of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes realise their potential. This programme is set to play a key role in us achieving that."
HiCAP has been created as a direct action from the work of UK Sport, and partners including Sport England, the English Institute of Sport and UK Coaching, trailblazing the first ever sports coach specific apprenticeship in the UK in collaboration with the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA).
UK Sport are the first organisation in the world to utilise the new Sports Coach apprenticeship standard, approved in January 2021 by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. UK Sport look to play a key role in further enhancing the credibility and viability of apprenticeships as an effective and sustainably efficient way of facilitating coach learning and development in turn supporting the professionalisation of the sports coaching industry.
High-Performance Coach is one of three pathways that form part of the newly created Sports Coach apprenticeship and this underpins HiCAP, which forms a key part of ensuring coaching is seen as a sustainable competitive advantage for UK high-performance sport. On completion of the programme and associated assessments each coach enrolled will be awarded a Level 4 Sports Coach Apprenticeship certificate and be well underway to achieving CIMSPA chartered member status.
The coaches will also have access to post-graduate coach learning and development provision on completion of HiCAP, if this is something that would benefit them and that they are interested in pursuing further as individuals. However, it is recognised that this might not be for everyone and the choice must lay with them as adult learners, based on their individual needs and wants.
Importantly, the journey the coaches are beginning will privilege them and their experience, and seek to harness the collective genius amongst the cohort to provide peer support and solve problems throughout the HiCAP journey, and beyond.