Premier Skills is a partnership between the Premier League and the British Council which uses football as a tool to engage with young people around the world. We work with national and provincial partners in China to deliver the Premier Skills Programme, focusing on providing professional development opportunities for school and university teachers and coaches to use methodologies to improve and popularise football with Chinese students.
The programme includes a legacy element where participants can progress to become Premier Skills coach educators who can themselves teach and empower other adults to deliver engaging, inclusive training programmes that benefit children and young people.
Since launching in China in 2009, the programme has trained more than 2,500 football coaches across 25 cities in China and directly reached more than 1.3 million young people in the country.
‘’Premier Skills has changed my life. While I like coaching players, I really want to progress to coaching coaches, as I want to reach more children by working with coaches. I have already begun to train teachers at my school. I have been teaching my fellow male and female teachers not only about coaching, but also about how football can be a positive experience for boys and girls.”
- Gao Xu, Primary School Teacher, Wuhan & Level 2 Coach Educator.