Premier League to train Chinese school coaches
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The hugely successful Premier Skills initiative, run by the Premier League and the British Council, will this week return to Beijing, China.
Premier Skills Phase one will take place from 6 – 10 June 2011, with intensive training for 40 grassroots football coaches selected from 38 primary schools across 16 districts in Beijing.
The project will be led by head coach Paul Hughes, a Social Inclusion and Projects Manager at Reading Football Club. He will be backed up by Laura Milburn, Craig Gill and Christopher Beard, community coaches from Premier League football clubs including Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club and Birmingham City Football Club. All of the coaches involved in Premier Skills are UEFA qualified coaches.
The course in Beijing is being jointly organised by the British Council, Premier League, the Beijing Olympic Development Association and Beijing Municipal Education Commission.
This is the first time for the Beijing Municipal Education Commission to join in Premier Skills and it will be responsible for the recruitment and selection of the participants.
This year, the Premier Skills tries to involve teachers from almost every district of Beijing, hoping to promote football in more primary schools and communities.
The five days training will be held at National Olympic Sports Centre. A total number of 40 football coaches will learn about leadership and coaching skills, fitness, nutrition and sports event management.
Led by the expertise of the four professional coaches, the teachers will strengthen their knowledge and understanding of inclusive development through football and will become pivotal figures within their schools, responsible for initiating, designing, developing and implementing football programs.
In addition, they will cascade their coaching skills to others, leading to sustainability of the Premier Skills project in Beijing and the surrounding area.
Premier Skills has already successfully run in 22 different centres in 15 countries worldwide. In 2009, initial Phase one training courses have taken place in Beijing, Dalian, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
During Phase one course over 40 physical education teachers from primary and secondary schools were trained in each of the cities. 24 teachers who performed excellently in their work after the Phase One training courses also took part in the Phase Two training courses at Shanghai in 2010.
As a milestone of Premier Skills in China, the closing ceremony for the Phase Two training courses took place in the VIP Lounge of the UK pavilion of Shanghai Expo. Guests, coaches and learners from both China and the UK sides witnessed this commentarial moment.
Premier Skills has achieved huge impact under the first stage of the program. It has run in 22 centres, across 15 countries around the world. It has trained 1,000 coaches, reached nearly 300,000 young people, with over one million football-focused English language materials distributed globally.
