Sport England has strong links with Active Partnerships (APs) across the country. The APs liaise with schools, local authorities and school games organisers (SGOs) to encourage participation in sport and gather and use statistics at a local level.
They are therefore very well placed to provide a link between Sport England and schools for the purpose of carrying out the survey.
The benefits are two-fold: existing strong links can be used to encourage participation in the survey, and new stronger links can be established through APs and schools liaising about the survey.
The APs were asked to recruit sampled schools to take part in the survey. When schools were happy to participate, the APs’ role was to support the schools through the process of selecting the appropriate classes (one class per year group from up to three year groups selected) which had the teacher/class names earliest in the alphabet.
It was also important that the selected classes were mixed-ability e.g. PSHE (Personal Social and Health Education) or registration groups. In small schools, for example in single-form entry schools, there was no class selection needed.
APs were able to provide advice to schools on a case-by-case basis, for example, if a school did not have any mixed-ability classes or only had mixed year group tutor groups. Where necessary, queries were referred back to Sport England and to Ipsos.
The APs were responsible for contacting schools and making them aware of the information and materials needed to take part, as well as following up with schools who said they would be happy to participate.
The APs were able to access details about the schools and each school’s unique URLs via secure online shared spreadsheets. The APs then provided the unique URLs and QR codes (if requested), which were created by Ipsos, to the participating schools in advance of fieldwork.
While the survey was live, the APs managed timings and monitored progress in order to target non-responding schools. This information was then fed back by the APs to Sport England via secure online shared spreadsheets, along with email contact details for each school for sending out school reports and contacting the school about their incentive (where applicable).