Premier League 4 Sport: evaluation for Sport England

Because of our work, the programme was able to evaluate and enhance the lasting impact of its work. Sport England used its continuing findings to inform the design of subsequent projects.

Premier League 4 Sport aims to engage 30,000 children and young people, especially those from hard-to-reach groups, in Olympic sports. We were asked to evaluate the programme and also its impact on other sports and on wider policy.

Stage one: gathering data.  We helped to collect and report data on participant engagement, retention and sustainability. We conducted e-surveys and interviews as part of our annual report, and trained staff to be able to support on-going monitoring and evaluation.

Stage two: a shared legacy of learning. We developed guides to develop an organisational capacity and understanding of self-evaluation. We also built a website where data was collated and analysed, and which provided news bulletins and examples of best practice. With Sport England, we ran a series of seminars with the programme’s participants to help create a legacy of learning.

Stage three: understanding and growing. Clubs are now using our Most Significant Change (MSC) method as a way of adding richness and context to their evaluations. Sport England is using the ongoing findings from Premier League 4 Sport activities to feed into the design of other projects.