For the first time in foot­ball’s his­to­ry, coach­es, ad­min­is­tra­tors, and man­agers can re­ceive qual­i­fi­ca­tions equiv­a­lent to a cer­tifi­cate course, a diplo­ma, a Bach­e­lor of Arts de­gree or a mas­ter’s de­gree in sports, cour­tesy of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Acad­e­my in Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment Cours­es.

It is be­ing used in the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­tin­ued at­tempt to en­hance the de­vel­op­ment of the sport by in­still­ing ed­u­ca­tion, as well as a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing tool to cope with the de­mands to lift the sport in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The cours­es are be­ing of­fered from Lev­el 2 to Lev­el 7, which is equal to a cer­tifi­cate all the way up to a mas­ter’s de­gree, Gary St Rose, the head of the T&TFA Safe­guard­ing, re­vealed.

Pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards and St Rose spoke about the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s new ini­tia­tive at the VIP Lounge of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Moth­er’s Day and ex­plained that the Acad­e­my in Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment Course will be ac­cred­it­ed to uni­ver­si­ties in the Unit­ed King­dom through the Na­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Frame­works in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The na­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tion frame­works in the Unit­ed King­dom are qual­i­fi­ca­tion frame­works which de­fine and link the lev­els and cred­it val­ues of dif­fer­ent qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

The cur­rent frame­works in­clude the Reg­u­lat­ed Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Frame­work (RQF) for gen­er­al and vo­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions reg­u­lat­ed by Ofqual in Eng­land and the Coun­cil for the Cur­ricu­lum, Ex­am­i­na­tions and As­sess­ment (CCEA) in North­ern Ire­land; the Cred­it and Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Frame­work for Wales (CQFW) in Wales; the Scot­tish Cred­it and Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Frame­work (SC­QF) in Scot­land; and the Frame­work for High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Qual­i­fi­ca­tions in UK De­gree-Award­ing Bod­ies (FHEQ).

Ed­wards, the brain­child be­hind the ini­tia­tive, said, “The TTFA Acad­e­my in Lead­er­ship and Man­age­ment marks an im­por­tant time in TTFA. We know that the chal­lenges of fund­ing and rais­ing rev­enue have been im­por­tant since our time of in­cep­tion as the new ex­ec­u­tive at the TTFA, as just over a year ago, it was im­por­tant that we raise rev­enue with­in the TTFA, and af­ter hav­ing dis­cus­sions, I know we would have cam­paigned on the sports sci­ence cen­tre on form­ing the acad­e­my, and this is one of the first steps in form­ing the acad­e­my.

“We would have part­nered with the In­sti­tute of Learn­ing, as well as the City and Guilds, in terms of bring­ing in the ac­cred­i­ta­tion for the acad­e­my, and the first step is the as­sess­ment-based pro­grammes, such as job ex­pe­ri­ence, where you can be ac­cred­it­ed and as­sessed by City and Guilds through the TTFA, and that’s the main fo­cus at this point. Then we will bring in the sports sci­ence cen­tre, which would have the class­rooms and the acad­e­my set up ful­ly, where we will do pro­grammes,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

“So, for the next maybe six months, we will be set­ting up the acad­e­my, and this is the first step in which we will have some sort of a struc­ture and some sense of sta­bil­i­ty in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball, and not just foot­ball but to all sports; all sports could learn from it,” Ed­wards as­sured.

The course is ex­pect­ed to start on lo­cal shores and spread in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in Africa and oth­er parts of the globe. Ed­wards point­ed to oth­er av­enues that ad­min­is­tra­tors, coach­es and man­agers can up­grade them­selves through op­tions by CON­CA­CAF and the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA, all of which, Ed­wards said, will help the TTFA to mon­e­tise.

“We have the agree­ment with City and Guilds to do the as­sess­ment and the cours­es, so peo­ple would pay us to go on the cours­es and get the ac­cred­i­ta­tions through City and Guilds, but we’re look­ing at cre­ative ways as well. We met with CON­CA­CAF, and we’re al­so go­ing to have dis­cus­sions around the acad­e­my, where we can­not just do it for T&T but for the re­gion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­wards, “I think it’s im­por­tant for ad­min­is­tra­tors and lead­ers in foot­ball to be ac­cred­it­ed the right way. They’ve been do­ing so much that they may not have the right ac­cred­i­ta­tion. FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF of­fer a host of cours­es through the on­line plat­form, and this ac­cred­i­ta­tion in terms of their as­sess­ment and the work that they’re do­ing will help them to move on to oth­er stuff.

“We are in dis­cus­sion with per­sons on FI­FA and Africa through the Con­fed­er­a­tion of African Foot­ball (CAF) as well to do the as­sess­ment, so this is some­thing huge. We have been do­ing it with coach­es’ ed­u­ca­tion cours­es. Cur­rent­ly, our ‘A’ Li­cense course is one of the two in CON­CA­CAF done. Cana­da is the next Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion that has that abil­i­ty, and we are do­ing the Pro Li­cense as well, so it’s just bring­ing the rev­enue through that lev­el of as­sess­ment,” Ed­wards ex­plained.

Mean­while, head of safe­guard­ing at the TTFA, Gary St Rose, as­sured that pro­vi­sion will be made for in­ter­est­ed per­sons with ex­pe­ri­ence to be qual­i­fied as well.

St Rose, who is set to spend a six-month in­tern­ship pe­ri­od at the head­quar­ters of FI­FA in Zurich lat­er this year, told Guardian Me­dia Sports, “The gen­er­al idea of the acad­e­my is to bring a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism to the sports are­na in terms of the cours­es of­fered but al­so val­i­da­tion for ex­pe­ri­ence al­ready made in the area.

“In terms of safe­guard­ing specif­i­cal­ly, we would al­so be val­i­dat­ing per­sons’ knowl­edge in safe­guard­ing. This is some­thing we are look­ing at cur­rent­ly. So, the ex­pe­ri­ence that you have gained over the years, we have safe­guard­ing of­fi­cers work­ing on this.

“We will be able to get an ac­cred­it­ed qual­i­fi­ca­tion, but gen­er­al­ly we would now be able to of­fer two spe­cif­ic things—one, cours­es, so you can come and get ac­cred­it­ed, and two, we could al­so ac­cred­it those we have through val­i­da­tion. So, per­sons who are ex­pe­ri­enced in the sport­ing in­dus­try may be able to get an ac­cred­it­ed qual­i­fi­ca­tion through ex­pe­ri­ence,” St Rose con­clud­ed.