As we enter a new year, along come a number of new challenges. Particularly this new year, it’s starting to shape up as a real winter of discontent both economically and on the weather front. This new year brings some significant new challenges for us as your Sector Skills Council, our assessment for relicensing which is already underway.

Through the process, early March brings consultation with key stakeholders from the sector. In particular, the government welcomes input from employers and this offers you the opportunity to feedback on our performance, and the progress of the sector over the past five years, and how you would like your SSC to evolve. You can go to our website for more details: www.skillsactive.com/aboutus/re-licensing.

Our objective hasn’t changed. We believe that the future of the sector really rests on the quality of its people and the need to properly invest in their training and skills development if we are going to increase participation in sport and physical activity. If we’re going to get more people, more active, more often, then the industry needs more people, better skilled, better qualified; now more than ever.

But let’s not make it all doom and gloom. We think the next five years is challenging yet hugely exciting. This is largely down to the launch of the National Skills Academy for Sport and Active Leisure and its rollout over the next two years, with the vision to extend the concept into the home countries as well. Finally we have the real opportunity for employers to engage with both setting the industry framework of qualifications and standards and buying in to its implementation; an opportunity that has been years in the making.

For me it’s always about shaping a long-term skills legacy; we identified the need to radically improve the way in which we develop the skills of people working in our sector. The issues are clear; the lack of career pathways and clear entry points into the sector, the mismatch of qualifications in the current education system enforcing the need for re-training, and the lack of funding available for training to aid the professionalisation of the sector. Despite our best efforts we haven’t been able to fully address these problems; we’ve had the evidence through our sector skills agreement but not the mechanism to address these issues. Until now that is.

Our objective hasn’t changed. We believe that the future of the sector really rests on the quality of its people and the need to properly invest in their training and skills development if we are going to increase participation in sport and physical activity. If we’re going to get more people, more active, more often, then the industry needs more people, better skilled, better qualified; now more than ever.

And not only that, the Academy will deliver a clearer skills framework, more affordable and relevant skills training, it will deliver locally at regional level where employers really need it, and it will revolutionise learner access through its innovative online academy.

I can’t mention the next five years without mentioning the Games. We clearly have a window to profile the sector and with the opportunity to utilise the investment into the sector, and the government’s commitment to improving the infrastructure despite the economic downturn, we really do have an opportunity to thrive.

According to the experts, the outlook is bleak. However with what lies ahead, we can only believe that the importance of our sector will be truly recognised in these testing times.