Welcome to Sport Ireland’s Coaching Toolkit to support organisations in their planning for recruiting, developing and retaining women in coaching. The toolkit has been developed as part of the work of Sport Ireland under the Coaching and Officiating pillar of its Policy on Women In Sport and in response to research conducted on women in coaching in Ireland.

This toolkit has been developed by Nora Stapleton, Sport Ireland’s Women in Sport Lead and Vicki Guy, Sport Ireland Coach Education Development Officer, as well as input from the Sport Ireland Coaching Unit and guidance and support from the Sport Ireland Women in Coaching Working Group. It is modelled on World Rugby’s ‘Women in Coaching Toolkit’ (World Rugby, 2020) and is derived from the ‘SCORE Gender Equality In Coaching Interactive Toolkit’, developed with support from UK Coaching.

This document is published under licence from ENGSO which asserts their right to be identified as the AUTHORS of the ‘SCORE Toolkit’ in accordance with the Berne Convention and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 

© SCORE Project/ENGSO, 2016

Sport Ireland would like to thank Professor Leanne Norman (Professor of Sport & Sociocultural Studies, Director of the Research Centre for Social Justice in Sport & Society, Leeds Beckett University) for her advice in the development of this toolkit.

The Coaching Development Programme for Ireland

The Coaching Development Programme for Ireland (CDPI), formerly the National Coaching Development Programme (NCDP), aims to facilitate the development of coaching and coach education in Ireland. The programme is overseen and managed by Sport Ireland Coaching and operates in partnership with National Governing Bodies and other agencies to develop an internationally recognised coach education system.

There are over 60 National Governing Bodies engaged in the programme, training and certifying 25,000 coaches each year on 130 different accredited Coach and Instructor awards. Since its inception in 1993, over 222,000 people have been trained and certified as coaches through the programme. In 2020 a review of the CDPI was conducted. The CDPI currently consists of two “Frameworks”, each of which set out core common knowledge and competencies for coaches, instructors and leaders working across different sports, activities and environments.

They are:

• Sports Coach Development Framework
•  Adventure Sport Instructor and Leader Framework

The frameworks include the skills required by the Coach and Instructor Developers who lead and support the development of coaches and adventure sports instructors.

It is envisaged that this toolkit can support and complement the CDPI while understanding that some of the actions implemented by the NGB may fall outside of the CDPI remit and NGB awards.