How peak bodies present and manage their formal education frameworks shapes the culture within their community.

There’s a growing body of research positioning the coach as a central determinant of player enjoyment and retention in sport. As a result, mandatory certification of coaches is becoming a more prevalent approach towards child safeguarding in sport.

But depending on how peak bodies structure their certification systems, I believe they can implicitly serve to exclude underrepresented groups and promote privilege (more on that later). So given the recognised need for greater equity in coaching roles, particularly at elite levels, this is an area worth dissecting. Let’s dive in!

Defining certification…

Accreditations, licences, certificates… we’re grouping them all together in this discussion as “tiered credentials issued by a peak body, that indicate a person’s suitability for a role within sport.” Most commonly, peak bodies use numbers or letters to label their certifications such as “Level 0”, “Level 1”, and so on. I’ll focus on coaching certificates within this article, but similar principles can be seen in officiating certificates also.

Note: A coach certification system is different from a coaching pathway framework, and neither of these are a coach education strategy. However we frequently see them treated as one and the same. I wrote about the importance of recognising non-linear coaching progressions in our blog on Coaching Pathways, which is worth a read if you haven’t discovered it yet.

What is the value in a coach certification?

There are three key parts that I see in the value proposition to gaining a formal coaching certification: compliance, new knowledge/skills, and status.

1) Compliance

Many coaches are bound by peak body rules to hold a particular certification depending on the competition standard. Through this lens, coaches are effectively buying compliance to perform their craft when they attend a coaching course.

If a league has a rule that "all coaches must hold a Level 1 coaching licence", this decision fundamentally aims to reduce the likelihood of a negative participant experience occurring via:

injury;
abuse;
boredom; or
lack of competence.

Achieving a minimum standard of participant experience has both a risk management benefit to the peak body, and also a marketing benefit as it strengthens the brand of the sport to prospective parents and sponsors looking for a safe investment.

So this form of control exists for very good reason, but we need to understand that as a form of value, it benefits the peak body exclusively.

2) New Knowledge and Skill

This is likely the first one that popped into your head: the coach gains new knowledge from the formal course, enabling them to become more competent and confident in their coaching. The knowledge they receive has been curated by the peak body, which provides a level of credibility and reliability to the skills they’ve learned.

This new knowledge delivers benefits to both the coach and the peak body (and of course, their athletes).

3) Status

With each increase in certification tier, there is an increase in scarcity. In 2017 there were 43,753 European coaches holding an UEFA A-Licence, with only 9,772 holding the higher UEFA Pro-licence (Source: Statista).

When something in society is scarce, it brings prestige and status. If everyone held an Masters degree, it wouldn’t be perceived as valuably. And in this area, a Level 2 coach is inherently perceived as “better” than a Level 1 coach, who is “better” than a Level 0 coach, and so on. In this way, certifications are like currency: they're merely a piece of paper unless the people around you also attribute value to them.

“I don’t know how to put this…but I have a Level 2 certificate.”

“It’s kind of a big deal.”

Status is the reason why there is a notion in the educational world of ‘certificate chasers’, people who seek qualifications with far more effort than they do seeking experience.

The distribution of value shifts across certification tier

How many people have you seen frame their Level 0 coaching certification and hang it on the mantelpiece? Or place it in their Twitter bio? Not many, if any.

I would propose that as the certification level increases, the distribution of value shifts from the peak body towards the coach. I’ve done my best to show this thought visually below, because it then guides how peak bodies frame their costing models based on who gains most from the certification.

What are are we seeing as trends?

1. The positioning of certifications hasn't changed much, but the world has.

Once upon a time, formal certifications were the primary vehicle for coach education. The knowledge I gained from a Level 1 course in the early 00’s wasn’t readily available elsewhere. Nowadays coaches have a limitless offering of content via Google, YouTube, and a host of other platforms.

To maintain relevance, peak bodies need to offer immersive and interactive experiences that learners cannot receive via YouTube or a PDF. They need to lean into creating connectivity between coaches, forging communities and tribes.

2. The composition of the coaching market is expanding beyond the the federated model.

There are a growing number of freelance private coaches in the sport coaching market, who have found ways to generate income outside of the federated model and the associated requirements for certification. Now, a peak body may take the approach of “if they’re operating outside the federated model, they’re not our concern” but I believe it’s worthwhile for peak bodies to consider how they interact with enterprising coaches. It’s likely that they would spend more expend on coach education and networking opportunities than volunteer coaches.

3. Coach education is frequently treated as a sales function, rather than a marketing function.

In a sales team, your revenue is compared rigidly to your expenditure - ‘money in’ must exceed ‘money out’ in order to be sustainable. And this frequently leads to the coach bearing the costs of their own development. The process is transactional; the service recipient pays for the experience.

In a marketing team however, you are engaged in broad brand-building activities where the benefits are not often directly measurable. You make investments to try and shape a culture, the pay-off to your investment is more intangible but enduring.

So who should pay for coach certifications?

A large part of this question depends on who we define as the “customer”. We commonly see the coach treated as the customer, and as such they bear the costs of attaining appropriate certifications - akin to the Uber contractor being responsible for maintaining their own licences and permits. I would instead propose that the coach is a distributor or retailer: an intermediary of positive experiences, not the ultimate customer that systems seek to serve.

As we outlined earlier, the value for entry-level courses is almost exclusively attributed to the players and peak body. This is not to say that the coach does not benefit from the learning experience, but it rarely unlocks new opportunities that an A or Pro licence does.

The solution to this would therefore appear simple:

Charge a premium for higher level coach certifications (where the benefit is skewed to the coach); which
Contributes to subsidising entry-level certifications (where the benefit is skewed to the peak body).

However this exacerbates another issue I commonly see - which is how coach certifications can unwittingly exclude underrepresented groups and preserve privilege.

Accessibility of Coaching Certifications

The Australian Sports Commission has acknowledged the challenges of being “inclusive in an inherently exclusive domain” in its 2023 strategy. It’s important to recognise that coaching certifications are also subject to the same inequities that are seen in many long-standing educational institutions. From the same UEFA coaching data I mentioned earlier, we see that there is one woman holding an A-Licence for every 75 men, and this gap increases to a ratio of 1:83 when considering the higher Pro-licence. Some of the factors that serve as barriers to accessing coaching certifications include:

Cost: Higher levels of certification frequently cost $500-$1,000+ and may require travel and accommodation as part of participation.
Time + Travel: The in-person requirements for participation can impact inclusion of regionally-based coaches, or coaches who are primary caregivers for their children.
Pre-requisites: For example “5 years coaching at a state level” may preclude suitably skilled coaches who have not been able to complete those requirements for fair reasons.

What are the opportunities for those overseeing coach certification systems:

We’ve outlined some of the ways that formal certifications in sport are not fulfilling their potential. So if you are someone overseeing a coach certification program within sport, here are some things to consider in your planning:

Be clear on WHY each certification exists. Left un-checked, frameworks are highly susceptible to preserving the status quo (“that’s how we’ve always done it”(
Understand WHO receives the most benefit at each certification level. Are you gate-keeping a Level 1 certification that adds substantially more value to your sport system than it does the individual coach?
Community before certification. Most peak bodies thankfully have rigorous coach registration processes, but few that I encounter have unlocked the potential of building a community with these databases (I think Cricket Australia does quite well in this space, and there’s a handful of others). Creating a connected community of coaches supported by an engaged coach developer is far more likely to improve coaching standards than discrete formal certification activities.
Redefine your budget as a marketing one, not a sales budget. This requires the organisation to measure customer satisfaction of its players/parents as a KPI, and reduces the pressure on coach educators to profit from a largely volunteer workforce.
Diversity income streams beyond a sole focus on coach certifications.
- Membership. Consider a shift to ‘coach membership’ fees over accreditation fees, enabling a sense of belonging to something. Due warning though - this requires you to deliver enduring value beyond a one-off course.
- Sponsorship: I steadfastly believe the coach education system is one of the most under-valued assets in sport.
Consider implementing scholarships, subsidies and/or quotas that promote accessibility to higher certifications for under-privileged groups.

Support

We offer a range of support to peak bodies to guide their coach education strategy from a community level through to the elite. Get in touch with us if you’d like to chat more on this vital area.

What role do coaching certifications play in your sport?