SSC To Invest In Long Term Development Programmes For The Future

6 April 2009

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SSC To Invest In Long-Term Development Programmes For The Future

National programmes to provide foundation to grow Singapore's pool of potential athletes, create more opportunities for athletes

Singapore, 6 April 2009 - The Singapore Sports Council announced today that it will be investing in long-term development programmes to provide the foundation to grow Singapore's pool of potential athletes and create more opportunities for athletes beyond their sports careers. The programmes will focus on building capabilities across the sports sector to develop the next generation of athletes, coaches, officials and sports journalists and photographers.

he Athlete: Back to Basics - Laying the Foundation for the Future

The first programme aims to provide every child with the opportunity to acquire physical literacy in order to have confidence to play sports throughout their lives.
Said Alex Chan, Chairman of the Singapore Sports Council: "Early childhood is when children begin developing the agility, balance, coordination and spatial skills and confidence to cope with physical challenges. Children can learn these skills faster and easier when they are young. The later children develop their motor skills, the less likely they are to develop physical literacy and the degree of confidence to play sports."
"Our vision is for every child from the age of 18 months to 6 years to be able to acquire fundamental movement skills so as to ensure that they don't lose out on opportunities to play sports in future. While the Fundamental Skills programme is not specifically meant to develop elite athletes for the next generation, it will help us to preserve the already limited pool of young talents from which we may find the next sports champion. Currently, we have about 194,000 children* under the age of 4 and we would like to see them all get a solid start in sports."
The SSC will develop a Fundamental Skills Programme to help preschool teachers, parents, grandparents and domestic helpers, use play and age-appropriate activities to develop the youngsters' motor skills. The programmes will focus on exposing youngsters to the joy of movement while building their self-confidence and capabilities. The SSC will work with private service providers on the development of knowledge resources, and will roll this programme out later this year.

The Athlete: More Opportunities to Play - Growing & Maintaining Interest in Sports

The next programme focuses on growing and maintaining interest in sports amongst school goers by providing more opportunities for them to play more sports and more kinds of sports in an enjoyable environment.
The SSC has been running a programme with the Ministry of Education (MOE) called to Sports Education Programme (SEP) since 2007 to provide even more opportunities for kids to play more sports in school.
The programme been very popular with the schools. In FY08, the SSC disbursed a total of $2.3 million to the SEP in FY08, which saw 313 primary and secondary schools and junior colleges utilising the funding.
Added Chan: "On the back of the strong success seen in SEP, I'm happy to share that in FY09, the SSC will continue to commit more funds to the SEP and more than 380 schools have registered to take part in the programme."

The Coach: Makes or Breaks an Athlete

Ensuring a steady stream of quality community to elite coaches is another key long term programme that SSC will be launching. This will ensure that quality standards are maintained at community level coaching to ensure people learn the correct sports skills, and peak performance standards are attained at the elite coaching level to develop the sports champions of tomorrow.
Said Oon Jin Teik, Chief Executive Officer of the Singapore Sports Council: "A coach can make or break an athlete. This is why the SSC takes the development of capabilities in coaches seriously and has put in place a holistic long-term pathway in coaching development and quality control programmes.
The pathway consists of three main components from the introductory to the elite level. At the introductory level, SSC will be launching a new training assistant programme to provide valuable hands-on experience for people interested in coaching. It will provide youth, young adults and parents with opportunities to grow their interest in coaching.
SSC has and will continue to play a key role in ensuring quality standards in the coaching industry through the National Coaching Accreditation Programme (NCAP) and the Continuing Coach Education Programme (CCE). Both programmes will ensure a level of professionalism in the way coaches conduct their programmes at the community and elite level.
Right at the top, SSC will be introducing three new major programmes to raise the standards of among the 200 high performance coaches. "These are the people who will help groom more Tao Li's, more Jasmine's, more Pin Xiu's," added Oon.
The first is the High Performance Coaching Programme which is open to all coaches funded by National Sports Associations (NSAs). It allows coaches to upgrade coaching skills and technical knowledge to train the athletes effectively. These include developing yearly training plans for athletes, including elements of sports science and customising training methods to individual athletes.
For FY09, SSC will fund up to $6000 per coach annually for up to 15 coaches to pursue professional upgrading opportunities internationally. SSC has already approved applications from eight coaches from various sports such as Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Table-Tennis, Sailing and Swimming.
The pinnacle coaching programme which SSC will be introducing is the Elite Coaching Programme which will prepare High Performance Coaches to take on top leadership roles in sports coaching. These coaches, with the NSAs, will identify areas like - leadership, programme management and coaching, that need improvement and structure a 2-year programme to equip the coach accordingly to assume responsibilities such as Head Coach or Technical Director in the future.
In FY09, the SSC will fund up to $15,000 per coach annually for up to five coaches for two years. Two coaches - Mr Mervyn Foo from Bowling and Mr Loy Soo Han from Table-Tennis - have been approved for the current year.

Technical Officials: Quality Officials Needed to Boost Singapore's Reputation as Top Sports Events Destination

Said Oon: "As Singapore positions itself as a destination for world class sports events, it will need to have a pool of competent and world class Technical Officials. Developing capabilities amongst Technical Officials is another long-term priority for SSC this year."
Working with Co-Curricular Activities Branch (CCAB) from the MOE and the NSAs, SSC will soon be launching a Junior Technical Officiating programme to expand the supply of 'young officials' for the growing number of 'fun? events that don't require elite level officiating-but it will place the youth on an alternate development pathway in sport.
Geared towards youth aged 15-18, the pilot project will have initial enrolment of 200 young teens and will have a strong component of character education in addition to fundamentals on technical officiating in the specific sport. The programme will kick off with seven sports - basketball, badminton, netball, football, hockey, volleyball and table-tennis. These sports were chosen for the pilot programme as a result of their widespread popularity in schools. The plan is to eventually cover all 26 sports administered by CCAB.

Sports Journalists & Photographers: Bringing the Game Alive

"Everything we do is connected. It's impossible to develop a succession of elite athletes without having elite coaches. It's hard to attract international class events without having international-class technical officials who can referee the games. If we're going to accelerate growth in our sports culture, we need people who can report, write and broadcast sports passionately," said Oon.
The SSC has been running sports journalism workshops for almost two years with the goal of getting young journalists ready to cover sports events. Some 130 students from secondary schools to polytechnics to universities have taken the SSC-funded sports journalism and photography workshops. Now, with the Asian Youth Games and Youth Olympic Games coming up, these young journalists can put their skills to test in covering international sport stories.

Conclusion

Concluding, Chan said: "As you can see, we are putting in place long term development programmes in areas which will give us a big impact across the board and will provide an important foundation to help us grow Singapore's pool of potential athletes. We look forward to working with our partners to make these programmes a reality."

For media enquiries, please contact:

S. Parameswaran
Manager, Corporate Communications
Singapore Sports Council
DID: 65005236
Email: parames_seenivasagam@ssc.gov.sg

Alvin Hang
Deputy Director, Corporate Communications
Singapore Sports Council
DID: 65005164
Email: alvin_hang@ssc.gov.sg

*Source: Based on Singapore?s resident population, comprising Singapore citizens and permanent residents. Department of Statistics data from June 2008, published March 2009