Newry City Community Trust – SCHOLAR programme

By Newry City Community Trust

WE are now into our third month of our Scholar Programme and the Scholars are settling well.

The Programme is now entering a more club based focus with the Scholars now spending three days a week under direct supervision of the club and its staff.  The Scholars, on 3 November attended a lecture that addressed Equality, Diversity and Interdependence (EDI).

In partnership with Football for All, Department Foreign Affairs (ROI) and Challenge for Change, Tutor, Davy White (Concept 11) worked with the Scholars to identify and understand values and principles of EDI whilst raising awareness of Community Relations within the sports industry.

This type of course is now becoming more popular and integral to good practice procedures for sports and voluntary sector organisations as we become more aware of the power of sport to reach out to those who are isolated or excluded from our communities.

Over the next few weeks the Scholars will team up with an academy and skills school coach and get to know what it takes to run a squad here at our academy and our skills school.

This will be an exciting time as they will see firsthand the high quality of our community coaching, youth development and senior coaching staff.  They will contribute to a ‘newsletter’ and we hope achieve a standard whereby we can distribute the ‘newsletter’ to you the fans.

Pool based Training

They have also commenced a water-based fitness programme and under the watchful guidance of Ryan McConville, our Academy Head Coach, who incidentally is a swimming instructor.

The pool training programme will include water conditioning where the Scholars will get accustomed to the different muscle movements and muscle development of aqua fitness.

We hope to give one scholar his first strokes as he will learn to swim for the first time.

In the future we hope to offer the Bronze Medallion awards and Pool lifeguard award. These qualifications will pivotal for the Scholars if they wish to find employment within leisure centres or gyms with a wet side. It is the dual purpose of the Apprenticeship programme to produce better footballers and also better skilled young people who can find employment.

Well done to the Scholars and thanks to our partners. 

Newry and Mourne Grassroots Development Centre

Vocationally Related Qualification (VRQ) in
Sports Club and Community Development
Level 2, 3 Units (Y/500/5790)
Level 3, 1 Unit (F/500/5556)

This series of six workshops are unique. They have been created as a result of an increasing number of Sports clubs who seek assistance in managing their affairs both on and off the field of play.
Over the past 18 months the Newry and Mourne Grassroots Development Centre has engaged with eight clubs ranging from the Irish Premier League to the Local Youth League, in a sustained effort to plan, action and review the clubs' performances in terms of Administration, coach and player development and most prevailingly, community outreach events.

Subsequently, the marrying of increasingly popular Club Development guidelines and a respected and established Community Development Tutors programme has brought us to what will be, quite possibly, the future of Grassroots Development where our 'Grassroots clubs' are in a position to attain the ambitions that their community wants.

STRATEGIC AIMS
Empowering clubs
To provide training and support for staff and volunteers in an ever changing sports environment.
Raising standards
To improve the provision of sport for players, coaches, parents and the community.
Promoting Sport in the Community
To increase the depth and breadth of Community Development in Northern Ireland through sport.
Sustainable Development
To build sustainable relationships between sporting clubs and their communities.
Sign up for 2009/10 programme now!! Give your club the advantage! Call Malcolm Roberts on 07894614301

NOCN Qualifications

NOCN offers qualifications, from Entry to Level Three in a wide range of subjects and areas. All NOCN qualifications are delivered within a credit-based unitised framework. This allows learners and providers to select units and accumulate and transfer credits according to individual needs. In this way, NOCN provides flexible routes to gaining full qualifications and enables qualifications to be achieved in small steps over a manageable period of time.

All of our qualifications are on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and published to the National Database of Accredited Qualifications (NDAQ) website, which contains details of qualifications that are accredited by the government's regulatory organisations in England (QCA), Wales (DCELLS) and Northern Ireland (CCEA).

Sports Club and Community Development course will deliver the following levels:
Level Two is comparable to NVQ2, Intermediate GNVQ and GCSE grades A*-C.
Level 2
Apply knowledge with underpinning comprehension in a number of areas
Make comparisons
Interpret available information
Demonstrate a range of skills
Chose from a range of procedures performed in a number of contexts, some of which may be non-routine
Co-ordinate with others
Undertake directed activity with a degree of autonomy
Achieve outcomes within time constraints
Accept increased responsibility for quantity and quality of output subject to external quality checking

Level Three is comparable to NVQ3. A Level, AS Level and AVCE.
Level 3
Apply knowledge and skills in a range of complex activities, demonstrating comprehension of relevant theories
Access and evaluate information independently
Analyse information and make reasoned judgements
Employ a range of responses to well defined but often unfamiliar or unpredictable problems
Operate in a variety of familiar and unfamiliar contexts using a range of technical or learning skills
Select from a considerable choice of procedures
Give presentations to an audience
Engage in self-directed activity with guidance/evaluation
Accept responsibility for quality and quantity of output
Accept limited responsibility for the quantity and quality of output from others

What is the QCF?
The Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) is a new way of recognising skills and qualifications. It does this by awarding credit for qualifications and units (small steps of learning). It enables people to gain qualifications at their own pace along flexible routes.
Credit and level
Every unit and qualification in the framework will have a credit value (one credit represents 10 hours, showing how much time it takes to complete) and a level between Entry level and level 8 (showing how difficult it is).

There are three sizes of qualifications in the QCF:
- Awards (1 to 12 credits)
- Certificates (13 to 36 credits)
- Diplomas (37 credits or more)
So in the new framework you can have an award at level 1 or an award at level 8. This is because the qualification type 'award, certificate, diploma' represents the size of a qualification, not how difficult it is.
Each qualification title contains the following:
- the level of the qualification (from Entry level at the bottom to level 8 at the top)
- the size of qualification (award/certificate/diploma)
- details indicating the content of the qualification.
Simply by looking at the title of a qualification you will be able to see how difficult it is, how long it will take the average learner to complete, and its general content. To understand the level of difficulty of the units and qualifications in the new framework it might be helpful to know that GCSEs (grade A*- C) are level 2, GCE A levels are level 3 and a PhD is a level 8. Knowing this can help to position the difficulty and challenge of each level in the framework.

ALTERNATIVLEY IF YOU HAVE A GROUP OF 8+ WHY NOT BOOK A COURSE EXCLUSIVELY FOR YOUR CLUB OR COMMUNITY GROUP! ON 07894614301

Each participant will receive a Certificate of Award on completion of all aspects of the course.
Each participant will receive a Certificate of Units on completion of individual Unit tasks.