UKA and England Athletics

England Athletics develops grass roots athletics in England, supporting affiliated clubs to prosper, developing more and better coaches, recruiting and supporting volunteers and officials. England Athletics provides competition opportunities at an international, national and area level and through developing the quality of coaching.
UKA (United Kingdom Athletics) is the international governing body responsible for a key number of high level functions, including the provision of World Class Performance Athletics.

What we do

England Athletics has three core objectives:

To increase participation across a wider cross-section of the community
To improve the quality of experience of every participant.
To support the development of the next generation of champions.

England Athletics delivers services, support and funding within the sport. Our role includes working with affiliated clubs, officials, schools, and coaches. We also provide national level competition and work on athlete development beneath world class performance level. Our role is directly related to the work of the many volunteers whose efforts are fundamental to the success of athletics in England.

The work of England Athletics includes:

Clubs – Clubs are vital to the provision of athletics in England. Schemes such as Athletics Networks are designed to deliver funding directly to where it can be used most effectively. Our aim is to raise standards and participation levels with minimum bureaucracy. The work done by England Athletics in other areas, such as coach and official development, is designed to help clubs thrive and achieve a high level of independence. England Athletics staff work with clubs to help in areas such as funding applications too.
Coach education – Coaching is a major priority for England Athletics due to its deep rooted, long term and wide spread benefits. We provide courses and assessments to enable people to qualify as coaches, and provide wider opportunities for coaches to increase their skills. These include coaching conferences, seminars and mentoring.
Officials – we provide Level 1 and 2 courses (with Level 3 managed by UK Athletics) and oversee the Tri-regional groups who manage senior officials in England.
Competitions – we hold national championship events with the support of volunteers who are able to offer a high level of expertise. We commission and support other competition providers where their expertise and role makes them the most effective provider of the appropriate competition.
Schools – we work in partnership with the English Schools Athletics Association, Quadkids and Sportshall athletics initiatives to provide suitable development and competition opportunities for youngsters. We believe schools athletics is an important way of attracting youngsters into the sport and introducing them to an enjoyable and successful involvement in athletics.
Participation – England Athletics works to improve participation at all levels of the sport. This includes the work done with clubs and schools but is also expanding to include wider initiatives to ensure as many people as possible are able to enjoy our sport.
Joint initiatives – we co-operate with many other organisations to promote and develop athletics.

England Athletics works with UK Athletics who also provide many services within athletics in England and across the UK. UK Athletics works to develop and sustain elite performance at world class level. It acts as a policy maker and works with the home countries, including England Athletics, to secure resources to enable the development of the sport at a grassroots level. For more information see www.uka.org.uk.

Athletics Networks are clusters of clubs working strategically with other local key partners to develop the sport of athletics in that area. McCain Athletics Networks will be multiple clubs (often comprising of a mixture of track and field and off-track) working together in each area. McCain Athletics Networks will seek to drive up the quality of coaching, links with community groups such as schools, competition in clubs (inter and intra club) and also seek to develop the all round quality of provision within clubs in the network.

West Yorkshire Athletics Networks

There are 3 networks in West Yorkshire; Bradford, Calderdale and Leeds. For more information click the links below

Athletics in schools

England Athletics is working with two key partner organisations to pull together a single competition framework for athletics in schools that can also be used in our community clubs. The programmes have seen over 60000 young people involved in short format athletic competition in 2009 alone. In 2010 there are plans for nearly 200 events nationwide in both formats involving schools in England.

Sportshall Athletics and QuadKids are two modified competition formats that offer youngsters the first taste of an athletic experience in their formative years. Both formats complement each other in that they can be deployed in the indoor, Autumn/Winter and early Spring period (Sportshall) and outdoor during late Spring and Summer (QuadKids) months.

Schools' athletics framework

Our competition framework for schools athletics in England was endorsed by DCMS in Summer 2009. To see the framework for athletics in schools, including which skills, activities and competition formats are relevant for each Key Stage please download the document England Athletics - Framework for Athletics in Schoolson the right hand side of this page. England Athletics presented its schools athletics competition framework to the National Competition Manager Network in December 2008 but you may find it useful to read through the slides from the presentation for further information.

Athletes

Work continues also with with current athletes to improve the standards competitors across the region. This has been aided by the introduction of the Power of 10 from UK Athletics.

Athletics

Published on: 16th August 2011

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