Active Scotland Delivery Plan

Outcome 6: We improve opportunities to participate, progress and achieve in sport

We want Scotland to have a sporting system which works at all levels – performance and grassroots – to motivate more organisations and individuals to get involved in sport and live active lifestyles. The whole country benefits from and enjoys the success of our top sportspeople, and we want to ensure that they are supported to deliver their achievements. We must also ensure that as many people as possible have opportunities to take part in sport, sharing in the health and well-being benefits this brings.

A vital part of this is building and maintaining a system which enables the broadest range possible of people to participate, progress and achieve in sport. This means identifying and addressing barriers which prevent people from various groups in accessing opportunities to take part in sport and physical activity.

Key Achievements

• Scotland and the sportscotland institute of sport made a significant contribution to Team GB and Paralympics GB finishing second in both medal tables at the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games. We achieved a series of best-ever results for an away Games.
• Scotland achieved its best ever overseas Commonwealth Games winning 44 medals at the 2018 Gold Coast Games. The Commonwealth Games Scotland athletes continue to work closely with young people and schools across Scotland to inspire the next generation.
• Scotland has some fantastic world class facilities such as Oriam, the National Sports Performance Centre, the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Aberdeen Sports Village, the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh as well as many quality local and community facilities. A total of £11 million has been invested in the UK's first ever Para Sport Centre at Inverclyde, and provides a fully-inclusive facility for disability sport performance and community users.
• Through direct club investment ( DCI), sportscotland supported sports clubs to hire paid professional staff in both coaching and administration posts, and forge stronger connections and better relationships with local schools. During 2016-17 sportscotland approved awards totalling £139,954 for seven clubs. This investment has leveraged an additional £239,126 from the clubs and local partners.

Our Actions

1. We will strengthen the provision of universally accessible active recreation and sports programmes and facilities for people of all ages and abilities by:

• Supporting the work of the Scottish Association for Mental Health to increase the representation and participation of people with lived experience of mental health problems in physical activity and sport (Active Scotland);
• Working in partnership with the Scottish FA to promote its new national Para-Football strategy, which will create the first dedicated affiliated national association in world football (Active Scotland).

2. We will ensure that programmes and initiatives, such as Jog Scotland, that can evidence their impact, are supported and championed; and support sharing of best practice to enable others to evidence the impact of their work (Active Scotland).

3. We will improve opportunities to participate in sport by:

• Supporting clubs and communities to offer a range of opportunities for people to participate through community sport hubs, Sports Governing Body regional development posts, and Direct Club Investment (sportscotland);
• Supporting Sports Governing Bodies to meet agreed development and growth outcomes (sportscotland);
• Providing more and higher quality opportunities to participate in sport in schools, before school, during lunchtime, and after school through our Active Schools programme (sportscotland).

4. We will improve opportunities to progress and achieve in sport by:

• Supporting and developing effective pathways between schools and clubs to improve the transition of pupils from school to club sport (sportscotland);
• Providing opportunities for more young people to compete in regular school sport competition across a range of sports at their chosen level (sportscotland);
• Supporting clubs, communities and Sports Governing Bodies that deliver planned opportunities for participants to improve, progress and perform (sportscotland);
• Agreeing and delivering specialist services to agreed sports for an agreed set of nominated athletes, which meet the objectives identified by sports (sportscotland);
• Providing specialist support services to identified athletes when required to ensure they are selected for Team GB, make the start line healthy and perform (sportscotland);
• Investing in Sports Governing Bodies Performance Programmes and in-house performance programmes to deliver outcomes at the Olympics and Paralympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and other significant international events (sportscotland).