How a Coventry table tennis club stopped running sessions under ratio

Joanne Pryce coordinates the junior section at Sherbourne Juniors Table Tennis Club in Coventry: 44 players aged seven to 15 on nine tables in a community centre hall every Friday. When she added up the autumn 2024 sign-in sheets, six of the 14 Starters sessions had run with fewer adults than the NSPCC recommends.

Where the club started

Joanne is a pharmacy dispenser who started helping at the club when her son joined at eight. She took over the junior section in 2023. Fridays run in two blocks: Starters, aged seven to ten, from six to seven, and Squad, aged 11 to 15, from seven to eight. The section has five qualified coaches, six parent helpers with DBS checks and two 15-year-old young leaders who came up through the club.

Everyone was willing. Nobody was counting.

• Coaches said whether they could make Friday in a group chat, usually on Friday afternoon, sometimes not at all.
• The sign-in sheet for children sat on the table by the door. The adults on duty were never written down anywhere.
• On busy weeks the two young leaders were treated as the third and fourth adults for Starters. They were good at it, which is partly why nobody noticed.
• One Friday in November 2024 a coach drove a player with a sprained wrist to the walk-in centre. For about 40 minutes, 19 Starters had one adult and the two young leaders.

What was actually wrong?

The club had enough adults across the term. It just found out how many it had on any given Friday at about ten to six.

The NSPCC's recommended ratios are one adult to six children for ages four to eight and one to eight for nine to 12, with at least two adults present, and only people aged 18 or over counted. Joanne staffed each group at its youngest age: Starters at 1:6 and Squad at 1:8. With 20 Starters and 24 Squad players registered, that meant four adults from six o'clock and three from seven. In the autumn term, Starters had fewer than four adults on six Fridays.

"I'd have told you we always had enough people. Then I sat down with the sheets and a calculator, and on six Fridays out of 14 we didn't. The young leaders were filling the gap, and they're 15. That's not their job."

What Sherbourne set up in Bitir

The committee agreed the changes at its December meeting, using the approach in our guide to adult-to-child ratios for clubs and classes, and they started with the first Friday of January 2025.

1. A coaches-only channel for the five coaches, six parent helpers and Joanne. Every adult confirms or declines Friday by 8pm on Wednesday.
2. A register for each group in Bitir's attendance widget. Parents mark a child absent in advance, so the expected headcount is known before anyone arrives.
3. A number on every session card: "Starters: 20 registered, 4 adults needed. Confirmed: Mark, Sanjay, Helen, Joanne." Joanne posts it on Wednesday evening once the confirmations are in.
4. A reserve list of three parents with DBS checks who are happy to be rung on a Wednesday night or a Friday afternoon.
5. A separate young leader role, so the two 15-year-olds appear on the session card under their own heading and are never counted in the adults line.
6. A fallback rule: if Starters is still short at 4pm on Friday, it runs for 30 minutes on four tables with the adults available, and parents get a direct message to collect early.

The fallback took the longest to agree. One coach wanted to run the full hour with three adults "just this once". Joanne's answer, which the committee backed, was that "just this once" was how the autumn term had happened.

What changed in the numbers?

Joanne compared the 14 Fridays of autumn 2024 with the 26 Fridays of spring and summer 2025.

Of the 11 Fridays when the confirmed adults fell short, nine showed up on Wednesday evening and were fixed with a call to the reserve list. The other two were on-the-day illness. One was covered by a reserve parent at 4.30, and on the other Joanne cancelled Starters at 3.10pm and messaged every family directly.

The waiting list was the surprise. Once Joanne could see exactly how many adults were reliably available, she could show the committee that two more parent helpers would let Starters grow to 26 at 1:6, with one adult to spare. Both were recruited from the waiting list's own parents in March, and eight children started in April.

"The Wednesday deadline sounded fussy when I proposed it. Now it's the thing everyone would miss. Friday afternoons used to be me texting people from the stockroom at work. Now I know by Wednesday night, and so does everyone else."

What Joanne does in Bitir

• A private coaches-only channel for Friday confirmations, session cards and the reserve list.
• Attendance registers for Starters and Squad, with parents marking absences ahead of time.
• Role permissions that separate coaches, parent helpers and young leaders, so the adults line on a session card is always right.
• Private messages to parents when a session is shortened or cancelled, rather than a post in the group.
• Pinned posts holding the ratio rule and the 4pm fallback, so a new helper can read them in a minute.
• An activity form each September for emergency contacts and medical details before the first Friday.

What she would tell another club

• Add up last term's sign-in sheets against your adults. Do it before you decide you have no problem.
• Write the adults needed on the session card, next to the children registered.
• Set a confirmation deadline two days out. Friday afternoon is too late to fix anything.
• Keep young leaders. Just list them under their own heading.
• Agree the fallback before you need it, so nobody has to argue for it on the night.

What's next

Sherbourne is adding a Saturday morning beginners' session for six- and seven-year-olds in the autumn, which Joanne is staffing at 1:6 with a cap of 12, so it never runs with fewer than two adults. She is also asking the two young leaders, who turn 18 next year, whether they want to start their coaching qualification, so they can count as adults when they do.

Related reading: adult-to-child ratios for clubs and classes, and running a volunteer rota for community groups.