swim21 is the ASA's Club Development model - a planning tool, based on the principles of Long Term Athlete Development, enabling clubs to help athletes, teachers, coaches and administrators to achieve their full potential. It focuses particularly on the needs of athletes - striving to provide them with the best possible support and environment.
swim21 Accreditation is a 'Quality mark'. It recognises nationally and regionally the clubs that are committed to providing safe, effective and quality services for the benefit of their members.
Clubs work steadily towards the attainment of a series of outcomes all of which are seen as essential if the right level of support is to be provided at each stage of an athlete's development.
swim21 Accreditation is available to ASA clubs of all aquatic disciplines that are positioned at one or more of the five levels:
- Foundation
- Teaching
- Skill Development
- Competitive Development
- Performance
The ASA has a commitment to achieving its equity targets throughout the sport. swim21 is no different and the Association is keen to support clubs in the shared objective of widening the participation base and hence the performance of the sport as a whole.
swim21 Review
swim21 Accreditation was first launched in February 2002. Since that time the programme has been constantly monitored to ensure it remains current and keeping pace with the needs of the sport and in particular the needs of the athletes.
A full review took place in 2006 and the resulting changes focused particularly on:
- Streamlining and simplifying the Modules to embrace all aquatic disciplines (previously exclusive to swimming)
- A revision of the elements to ensure that outcomes are in line with the expectations of our National Performance Directors and Long term Athlete Development (LTAD)
- The Gold/Silver Award system and the merits or otherwise of having two levels of accreditation. The current format is one level only - gold/silver has been removed
This was followed by a further review in 2008, where as a result of consultation with Clubs and other ASA Partners, the accreditation process was dramatically streamlined still further, whilst maintaining the expected quality of the programme.
The launch of swim21:Online in April 2010 has added yet another dimension to the ASA's accreditation programme.
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