The Progress Award Scheme is a progression of awards for new archers after completion of their beginners’ course.
The Archery GB Progress Awards Scheme is for new and current archers who wish to boost their skills and knowledge. The scheme is a great motivator, encouraging archers to go further in the sport while having fun – with certificates and badges awarded for achievement along the way.
The nice thing about the awards is that it doesn’t matter which bowstyle you use, all archers are welcome. It also doesn’t matter about your gender as there’s not a separate scheme for women and men.
There are five badge colours you can receive – White, Black, Blue, Red and Gold – each colour depicting a particular skill level, and you can gain them in any order you like. So, if you have a particularly good session and get the scores for a Red or Gold before you’ve received your White? Then that’s perfectly fine. You just can’t claim more than one badge from one set of scores.
There's a separate set of badges for indoors and outdoors, so you can chart your progress across both seasons.
The indoor rounds are shot at different distances (10 yards, 15 yards and 20 yards) depending on your age group and what colour you’re going for, but all are shot on a 60 cm Portsmouth target.
The outdoor rounds are also shot a difference distances but they are either on an 80 cm face or a 122 cm face.
You’ll need three qualifying scores to be awarded each badge. To gain a qualifying score, you will need to shoot 36 arrows in a single session – no splitting it across multiple sessions.
Everyone gets six sighter arrows, and extra sighters can be given by your
club, though a scoring starting point does have to be decided.
If you’re still having that brilliant session and arrows are flying into the gold with surprising regularity, there’s nothing to stop you from shooting more than one round in the same session.
There are five different age groups: U12, U14, U16, U18, and Seniors. Clubs can also offer an Over 65 award group, should they wish, using the U16 scores.
Outdoors for ALL bow styles, 5 zone scoring is used for the 122 cm face and 10 zone scoring for the 80 cm face. Indoors, 10 zone scoring is used for ALL bow styles but Compounds must use the inner 10 ring to score 10. All the scores you need to know are in the Resources section of this page – remember, they’re separated by age category so make sure you’re shooting the right score.
Clubs who wish to take part in the scheme can order badges from Archery GB by emailing the order form to awards@archerygb.org. Forms can be downloaded from the Resources section of this page. If your club wants to award certificates, you can also download them from the Resources section and edit them yourselves.
Why not share photos of your awards on social media by tagging us in your
posts. You can also use the hashtag #ArcheryGB.
