Junior Athlete Education (JAE) Information sheets

What is it?

Junior Athlete Education (JAE) is a talent support programme for school sport partnerships to help their talented young sports people manage and balance both school and sport demands.
Key features of JAE in schools are:

• support workshops for talented young athletes
• a workshop for their parents
• mentor support from identified staff in school.

JAE workshops cover aspects of lifestyle management, target setting and planning, to give young people skills to balance their schedules of school and sport.

Who is it for?

JAE aims to support talented young sports people on the gifted and talented (G&T) registers of schools within school sport partnerships.

Key staff in these schools are identified to be trained to deliver the two strands of JAE: workshop delivery and mentoring.

Trained staff can then deliver JAE support workshops to identified talented young sports people in their school sport partnership, or become JAE mentors to further support these talented young sports people.

How does it work?

Sports colleges and their school sport partnerships are targeted yearly to be trained to implement and deliver JAE.

Schools implementing the programme often work closely with local, regional or national governing bodies of sport (NGBs), clubs, school sports associations and other organisations or agencies.

To enable young athletes to maximise their sporting and academic potential, JAE encourages schools to work with the pupils, their parents and coaches to reduce conflict between education and sport.

Two different types of training are necessary for staff in schools and school clusters wishing to implement JAE (the same staff do not need to attend both courses):

• one-day JAE workshop deliverers training
• two-day JAE mentor training.

What are the benefits?

School sports partnerships can benefit from JAE in their schools by:

• proper identification of pupils’ needs
• helping to balance commitments in school and sport, by giving pupils lifestyle management, target-setting and planning skills
• networking with parents and coaches to reduce conflict between school and sport demands
• forecasting potential school and sport conflicts before it’s too late
• informing whole-school policies on provision and support for talented young sports people, as well as good identification methods and techniques
• using a similar model of support for all G&T pupils in their schools, showing the impact of the sports specialism
• encourage G&T reform to raise standards through the sports specialism.