Sports Coach Apprenticeship Level 4

The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) for Level 4. On successful completion of this apprenticeship, the Sports Coach will be eligible to become a Coach Practitioner Member of the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA).

If you’re passionate about sports, mentorship, and making a difference, this apprenticeship prepares you for a fulfilling career as a sports coach, impacting lives and contributing to a healthier society.

As a Level 4 Sports Coach Apprentice, you’ll learn to design and deliver coaching programmes tailored to high-performance athletes, community groups, or school students, enhancing skills, participation, and wellbeing. In high-performance, you’ll work with athletes to reach competitive goals, collaborating with sports scientists and medics.

As a community coach, you’ll encourage lifelong fitness through inclusive programmes, supporting local health and social initiatives. In schools, you’ll work with teachers to develop students’ motor skills and physical confidence, following national curriculum standards. This apprenticeship builds skills in profiling, performance tracking, and stakeholder collaboration, preparing you to make a meaningful impact in sports coaching across diverse environments.

Core Duties

• Duty 1 – Develop and update own coaching philosophy and strategies through professional practice, continuous development and self-review.
• Duty 2 – Develop and implement evidence-based, progressive coaching systems that comply with all relevant legislation, statutory guidance, sector standards and codes.
• Duty 3 – Use up-to-date knowledge of broader issues affecting the coaching environment to proactively influence best practice across the coaching team.
• Duty 4 – Utilise and collaborate with industry-wide support networks and internal team members to deliver the most effective coaching services to participants.
• Duty 5 – Use enquiry and profiling techniques to create a learning and development curriculum that addresses participants’ unique needs, targets and goals while building trust.
• Duty 6 – Provide support to participants and the coaching team through progressive coaching programmes, including at events or competitions.
• Duty 7 – Promote holistic wellbeing in coaching to manage stressors experienced by participants.
• Duty 8 – Facilitate learning and skill acquisition by creating positive coaching environments that incorporate learning theories, behaviour management, technology and support mechanisms.
• Duty 9 – Measure the impact of coaching strategies on participant engagement and development, and evaluate the effectiveness of own performance on the wider coaching team, organisation and sport.

High Performance Coach Duties

• Duty 10 – Maintain up-to-date knowledge of global trends, standards and contemporary influences in high-performance sport contexts.
• Duty 11 – Deliver coaching pedagogies and processes that reflect high-performance context, culture, politics and stakeholder needs.
• Duty 12 – Profile development needs to set and monitor goals based on measurements of athlete/player bio-psycho-social attributes and sport-specific skills.
• Duty 13 – Design and deliver high-quality, inclusive sessions that promote sustainable high-performance gains and enhance the national and international positioning of the sport.

Community Coach Duties

• Duty 14 – Maintain knowledge of national trends, social change strategies, local participation/performance data and contemporary influences.
• Duty 15 – Deliver coaching pedagogies that consider community sport context, culture, constraints, geographical infrastructure and demographics.
• Duty 16 – Profile engagement and development needs to set and monitor goals based on participant motives and psychological, physiological and social attributes.
• Duty 17 – Design and deliver high-quality, inclusive coaching sessions that meet community, government or club objectives and enrich participant experience.

School Coach Duties

• Duty 18 – Stay up to date with education standards, trends, frameworks and contemporary influences.
• Duty 19 – Deliver coaching pedagogies aligned with the national physical education curriculum and adapted to the school’s context, culture, strategies and regulatory constraints.
• Duty 20 – Profile development needs to set and monitor physical education targets based on participants’ cognitive, physical, social and emotional attributes and psychomotor skills.
• Duty 21 – Design and deliver high-quality, inclusive curricular and extracurricular lessons that foster whole-child development and sustainable psychomotor skill progression using a mastery learning approach.