Sports Officials UKSports Officials UK has worked with Skills Active (the Sector Skills Council for Active Leisure and Learning) to develop a set of National Occupational Standards for officiating.
SkillsActive and its partners have developed these to help to inform current and future qualifications and training programmes for officials. The NOS can also be used by organisations for other purposes, for example performance appraisal, job descriptions, in-house coaching and mentoring etc. The NOS have been written in very general terms so that individual governing bodies can ‘fill in’ the detailed requirements of their sports.
National Occupational Standards are set at several levels, from average GCSE standards to post-doctoral level, depending upon the occupation being described. SOUK's members generally considered the entry level for sports officials to be at NOS level 2. NOS level 3 was considered correct for those officiating at national standard; when defined, the NOS at level 4 will aply to elite sports officials.
The standards already in existence or envisaged for the future are: