Change Starts Together - Questions And Answers

Following the conference the Executive Summary of the Survey was circulated, which can be downloaded from here.

The questions received relating to the survey were connected to the recognition that the responses were not fully representative of everyone who played the sport. There were a variety of questions about whether, and how, England Hockey will find out more from a wider cross section of the sport, or if England Hockey would undertake greater analysis of opinion on subsets of data of underrepresented groups where numbers were low. There were also some questions about wider data and insight about the sport.  

Answer:  England Hockey is very keen to get more views, voices and perspectives heard from both within and outside the sport. We will revisit the original survey and undertake more analysis. We are currently planning for further research and surveys to hear people’s views and opinions. It is important to understand how people feel about the sport and hear the opportunities as well as the challenges that exist. There will also be dedicated work on getting clear and accurate data which the game can use to measure progress. There will be more detail to follow in the soon to be launched ED& I Framework.

There were several questions about supporting clubs with their own ED&I plans and if training would be made available.

Answer: England Hockey will be creating and rolling out training and development support for the whole game. Greater detail will be provided in the ED&I Framework. Some training will be role specific, most will be open to everyone who is interested in developing ED&I in the game.

The Talent Centre and Talent Academy criteria include specific ED&I requirements which clubs will need to meet in order to achieve Talent Centre accreditation or host a Talent Academy.  Clubmark and wider club guidance will be strengthened and supported for ED&I.

There will be an uplift in examples, stories and case studies of existing club activities. Such as listening and working with members on what makes a club truly inclusive and welcoming; how to reach new people and get them involved –local state schools; creating a Flyerz section; working with a local community group. These will be on both the ED&I pages of the website as well as embedded within the Running a Club pages. There will be further promotion of the stories from other organisations such as Buddle (Club Matters) or other organisations working with our clubs to make the sport more open and accessible.

The questions received related to how England Hockey promote hockey in state schools; accessibility of the sport for inner city state schools; volume of playing and coaching hours in private schools vs state schools; and overall promotion of hockey within the education system so schools, colleges and pupils know about opportunities.

Answer: England Hockey is working with the Youth Sport Trust, the School Sport and Activity Forum, the Teams Sports group and others in relation to promoting hockey into the education sector. The work also includes lobbying Government for better provision for sport and physical activity in schools.

The specific education focused offer from England Hockey includes adapted resources and equipment as well as dedicated teacher and schools support on Hockey Hub.

https://www.englandhockey.co.uk/deliver/teaching-hockey-in-education/support-and-resources 

Development of adapted resources and equipment aimed at making hockey as deliverable as possible in different environments by teachers with little or no hockey experience (Quicksticks, In2Hockey, and more recently Hockey Heroes) 

https://www.englandhockey.co.uk/deliver/teach/why-teach-hockey 

https://www.englandhockey.co.uk/deliver/teaching-hockey-in-education/primary-school-delivery 

https://www.englandhockey.co.uk/deliver/teaching-hockey-in-education/secondary-school-delivery 

Hockey Hub offers a dedicated teacher / schools support area, offering a range of online or face to face CPD opportunities for teachers, podcasts to support delivery, free access to example resources and links to where specific resources and equipment suitable for school delivery can be accessed.

https://hockeyhub.englandhockey.co.uk/ 

Junior competitions framework – aiming to make the offer appealing and suitable for a wide variety of schools to access meaningful and enjoyable competitive opportunities. This, combined with the School Games which has been running state school sports competitions since 2010, ensures a much wider range of hockey competitions are available for schools to enter. In 2018-19, over 900 inter-school School Games hockey events were organised across the country, providing competitive opportunities for over 9,000 state school teams and over 66,000 young people. We are continuing to work in conjunction with key partners such as the Youth Sport Trust, Active Partnerships and School Games Organisers to further develop this activity, and to engage even more schools and young people in the opportunities provided. 

England Hockey also provide a range of support materials and templates to help with festival / competitions organisation: 

https://www.englandhockey.co.uk/deliver/teaching-hockey-in-education/school-competition-and-festival-guidance 

Guidance is also available helping schools develop a workforce to support delivery of hockey activity  

https://www.englandhockey.co.uk/deliver/volunteer/young-leaders 

There were a range of questions here about the new Talent Centres and Talent Academies, England Age Group programmes (EAG) and opportunities for players, as well as some on coaching.

Answer: There is now a dedicated section on England Hockey’s website for information about the talent strategy including information about Talent Centre accreditation and Talent Academies. It includes FAQs for players, parents, clubs and schools. The FAQ for clubs document provides information on how the new system will be accessible to a broader diversity of players. Please take a look at the updated FAQs for clubs document which can be found here.

Question: What are the plans in EH to increase gender representation within coaching especially in high performance including talent pathway? How would you inspire the new generation of coaches, especially females? 

Answer: Over the past 2 years England Hockey has delivered 'Project Fair Game' a mission to learn more about female coaches by understanding their lived experiences in hockey. 32 coaches (28 from England, 3 from Scotland and 1 from Wales) are part of the project and have shared their stories, learnt together and provided ongoing challenge and support to each other, with a clear purpose to normalise females in coaching, so that the true art of coaching is recognised as a genderless craft.  England Hockey are currently analysing the key themes that have come from the project, and will be communicating and acting on the findings.

In addition to this we have proactively identified coaches to be nominated for external Female Coaching Programmes. This will be built on to increase opportunities in the future.

Finally, a focus moving forward is to learn more from coaches of ethnically and cultural diverse communities and coaches of ethnically and cultural diverse communities, so we are in a better position to support those coaches. 

There were further questions regarding data which have been added to the first part on the More Inclusive Sport Survey answers above. An example would be: “Noted that there were limited responses from those not engaged in the sport. We are not going to change anything about Hockey culture if we don't listen to those who are excluded from it. What do England Hockey plan to do, to hear those voices?”

Other very specific questions are answered below.

Q: It would be very useful to ask the some of the questions about England Hockey, e.g. is England Hockey Inclusive, welcoming?

Q: Are you taking this throughout England Hockey both internally and externally?

A: England Hockey is committed to improving ED&I across the game and that includes how England Hockey leads and manages the sport. We will be looking at:

• our systems and processes;
• representation, and opportunities to be heard, within our structures;
• how our workforce is recruited, trained and supported;
• the insight and research we gather and act upon; and
• how and where we focus our time and resources to support and develop the game and the people within it

Q: At the recent England Hockey Masters Competitions held at Nottingham Hockey Centre multiple men’s matches were streamed but only 1 or maybe 2 women’s matches.  Will England Hockey commit to address the equality imbalance here?

A: England Hockey had expected to show all the matches, but circumstances unfortunately meant that it was not possible.

There were two tournaments on separate weekends – the women’s on the first weekend and the men’s on the second.

On the first day of the women’s event the watering system was damaged on the pitch where games can be streamed from, which resulted in the two women’s games not being played on that pitch. Otherwise, equal numbers of men’s and women’s games would have been streamed across the 2 weekends.  

Q: Has England Hockey signed up for the Sporting Equals Charter, which supports organisations to tackle ethnicity gap, "Capture, Commit and Celebrate"

Q: I understand Sporting Equals has encouraged Premier league football clubs and Sports NGBs to participate in "Race Representation Index

A: England Hockey will be signing up to benchmarking assessment processes as part of demonstrating our commitment to ED&I best practice, and the Sporting Equals Charter is one of the options under consideration. England Hockey is submitting information to the Race Representation Index.

Q: Would an international match back on grass show schools they can use their fields again for our sport?

A: Whilst playing on grass would be unrealistic due to FIH's requirements for international matches, this question makes a really good point about promoting hockey on a wider range of surfaces. This raises a further question about promoting different formats of the game.  England Hockey does promote the sport being played in a range of formats on several surfaces and we will be looking to showcase more examples of where this does happen in the future. Please see the earlier questions about schools for some of the current ways England Hockey encourages schools to take up hockey, many of which do not need a sand dressed, or water-based pitch.

Q: Of the England Hockey hierarchy including paid coaches/managers, what percentage is represented by ethnic minorities ?

A: As part of the emerging ED&I Framework England Hockey is committed to collecting this data, in a way that is consistent and can be bench-marked, for example against the national census.  England Hockey will share this information in due-course.

Q: What are the credentials of people selected to be on the newly formed Advisory Group?

A: Following the announcement of the formation of the Advisory Group a profile on each member can be found here 

Q: A slightly different question aimed at the elite level: why is it that Welsh and Scottish [and potentially NI] players will be excluded from the FIH Pro League [potentially more] as no longer GB but now only England. What does that state about the importance of Wales and Scotland in elite hockey in the country. 4 athletes from W and S represented or travelled with GB to Tokyo and played in the cycle leading up - now they are put back out to their country but not on what was a global stage?

A: Please see the information here which explains why England are playing in The FIH Pro League this year.

Q: What is being done in terms of international matches and location as it is all London centric- if you can't be what you can't see then these need to be open to a wider, more geographically diverse audience

A: England Hockey have recently announced that Durham will host the Women's Hockey EuroHockey Qualifiers in August 2022, which is the start of taking international hockey to as many parts of the country as possible.

Q: If you another of these would you consider having a BSL interpreter on the screen for hearing impaired players?

A: If you have any specific requirements please email inclusion@englandhockey.co.uk

England Hockey welcome questions and feedback about equality, diversity and inclusion at any time, please email inclusion@englandhockey.co.uk