Case Study: Sport Structures

A Decade of matrix Accreditation:

Ross from Sport Structures Education CIC Shares the Secrets to Their Success

Learn practical tips from an organisation who has been accredited for over a decade, to support your journey through the matrix Standard Accreditation process.

Sport Structures Education CIC is an international provider of sport education and consultancy services since 2002. Ross Szabo, Senior Apprenticeships Manager, oversees quality and curriculum development compliance.

In our recent “Live Case Study” webinar, Ross generously shared insights into the organisation’s accreditation journey:

Why did you originally want to start achieving matrix and why have you then stayed with the standard for over 10 years?

Originally, it was a mandatory requirement for us, but over time it’s now essentially not a mandatory requirement.

We kept it going because we felt that we’ve got quite a lot of value out of it. As an organisation, we’re always striving for best practise in anything that we do.
Again, having that external benchmark is something that aligns with our values, and something that we want to keep going.

When thinking about your re-accreditation every three years, how do you prepare for those?

I think this is probably a general answer to the question, but when we’re wanting to prepare for anything, I think it’s kind of common sense that if you plan in in advance, you tend to have a better outcome.

I think to be honest, if you focus on the quality of what you’re doing, in all areas of your provision, whatever programmes you’re delivering, quite often the outcomes are self-evident. Deep dive into the enrolment process that you do in the onboarding.
The initial discussions with employers and learners – what information is being shared, what material have you got that you can give to them? It feeds into how well trained some of your staff are. A lot of these things are things that Ofsted would be looking at. Link it into your Quality Assurance process and prepare as you go, well in advance.

The matrix Standard can support anything you do. And if you focus on the quality of the different areas quite often, then you’re preparing yourself well for your matrix standard assessment.

The key priority prior to an assessment is just being as organised as you can be, and communicating to all the staff involved on what to expect, because there might be some of your team that understand the matrix accreditation process, and others that aren’t as aware of it. So, I think anything you can do to get them up to speed and just explain what the process is.

The other thing we’ve done is promote honesty within the team. As an example – when we recently had our matrix re-accreditation in December, we encouraged one of our team members to talk about CPD, making sure that she’s got that as an area for development. That’s something that’s in our quality improvement plan. It’s something we’re pretty good at but we’d like to get better at, and it’s something she’s keen to do. So, we said – tell the assessor that. And invariably, it came out in the feedback – can you put more onus on CPD?

Because at the end of the day, if you’re not going to be honest, then you’re not going to get the relevant feedback to improve. So even though we’ve been doing it for a while and we’ve got pretty good benchmarks, there’s always room for improvement. It should be an exercise for you to identify areas you can improve.

How do you find that the yearly CICs were different from the re-accreditation that happens every three years? Do you find that the feedback from your accreditation is brought into your yearly review assessments (CICs)?

Yes. I think there is consistency throughout, which is good. The assessor has been the same person for us for the whole period, so they have started to understand the business and see it change over time. We did our initial accreditation over 10 years

ago, but it was a good starting point to set our benchmark. From the first one, you understand where you are. From then it’s how could we, over time, incrementally build and make improvements.

Do the CICs support that for you?

Yes, absolutely. Those yearly CICs, they review the actions that have been agreed during the accreditation, which is done every three years.

How do you feel that your practitioner, and the matrix team have supported you?

I think the practitioners are knowledgeable around IAG. Having somebody external who works with organisations in different sectors, different funding streams, different areas… they bring in knowledge and ideas that maybe we don’t think of.
It’s been very organised, it’s quite often planned well in advance. We’re given lots of notice, we have found that consistently throughout. So, it has been very well run, very organised.

What does achieving the matrix Standard mean to you as an organisation and how do you celebrate that?

I think it’s just another example that we can showcase externally around the quality of our provision. It’s something that we can celebrate and show creditability in.
It links to one of our values around excellence, and we also have a value around integrity. So, it ties in with our values.

I think what celebrating looks like in practise for us, is we share the feedback internally with all the team. It’s a nice recognition to pick out the positive feedback. And then also the areas for improvement, it’s helpful to explain those to people so they understand right, okay, this is what we’re going to be looking at moving forward.

And has it been supportive in how you plan strategically, and your organisation’s development over the years?

Absolutely. It’s certainly fed into how we operate. We’ve changed some of our quality assurance processes based on it, and put a bigger focus on Information, Advice and Guidance.

Do you have some general advice for organisations who are either about to have their first assessment, or maybe are due a reassessment?

I would say start preparing early. And build it into your continuous improvement process with your Quality Assurance processes.

I appreciate not everyone will be in scope for Ofsted, but one thing that I’ve found, having gone through Ofsted visits, is that matrix accreditation is almost like a bit of a mock. If you have got the same person that’s going to be your Ofsted nominee, matrix assessment can be a bit of an opportunity for that, because as we know Ofsted is quite important, and can have a big impact on things.

What my team now does, when we’re planning the learner interviews etc, we’ll book the sessions in with learners and employers and stakeholders, but we’ll set them up on teams, for example. And we’ll allocate tasks for different people. So, someone within the team might just be a meet and greet person. They’ll schedule the calls, book the teams meetings in, copy the assessor in, but they’ll jump on the call with the learner or whoever a few minutes before and just say hi, making sure everything’s okay before the assessor comes in.

And that’s something we’ve then built into Ofsted processes as well. So, things like that just make things run smoothly. It makes you come across professionally. I mentioned about being honest and open, and I think that’s good to encourage your team to do that – to maximise your learning.

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