Sunday 9 December 2007

Schools, students, AWOLs & socks

Conversations around schools continued this week with a very helpful conversation from the development officer at Learning & Teaching Scotland (a PE teacher on secondment who used to teach archery in his school). Information about activity also started to come in - most of the activity seems in the Northern Area, and John Sullivan told me he had been running lunch time sessions for over 10 years, wow!

I visited Edinburgh University who are in the early fund-raising and planning stages for two new indoor ranges to be open in 2010 as part of an extension to the already impressive sports centre (http://www.sport.ed.ac.uk/). The club has really grown in numbers and quality over the years and the University is acknowledging this with this investment.

The SAA AGM was not quorate this year which is a real pity and those Absent With Out Leave missed some great debate and information. The Children 1st unit that looks after child protection were there and gave a presentation full of really useful facts. GNAS' Marketing & Development Director talked about Clubmark and how it could be used to provide a framework for club improvement and also took open questions - what an opportunity missed to talk to someone at such a high level! The Development Plan was covered by Michael Mather and a good healthy debate followed.

The Development Plan had a lot of detail in it, but there is one inescapable fact - if Scotland had the same participation as in England, the SAA numbers would just about double and we could afford to employ a Development Officer to get even more growth.

The final thought is that "her indoors" made me shoot a round on Friday and beat me. Totally unacceptable, so socks need pulling up.

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