Clubmark

Kidlington Forum Now Have Clubmark

Most of you will now know that the club has achieved clubmark status recently. Thanks must go to Karl Bushell who has lead on this and put in a lot of hard work to secure it. As part of the requirements for obtaining a Sport England grant towards developing the new pavilion the club agreed to pursue clubmark. Clubmark is the only cross sports quality accreditation scheme for clubs with junior sections. The club offers consistent, accepted and adopted minimum standards for juniors. It is required to have a duty of care, to safeguard and protect its juniors. The club has embaked on training coaches and Karl Bushell and John Duncalfe have recently obtained level one qualifications from the English Table Tennis Association (ETTA). Other members are about to start their courses. Yet other members have coaching qualifications under the previous system. We offer junior coaching from starters to elite status. The new Academy for coaching the most promising and committed players started this season under Karl's guidance and should see steady development of talent to produce players for Town and County teams.

Clubmark promotes well ordered finances which, thanks to our Treasurer Aubrey Hughes, is a hallmark of the club. It also promotes good communication and the new website is a key part of that. You can add your own text to the website: just send your words to me. For instance you might want to write up what happened at your last match. Clubmark has helped clubs to expand and we intend to do that, offering more opportunities for table tennis based activities. We already have started coaching at Schools as part of that. If you have any more ideas on this please let me know.