Ministry of Education campus football project updates: 20,200 specialist football academies

On June 26, the Ministry of Education organized a press conference in Haimen, Jiangsu Province to present the latest updates and results of their national campus football project. 

According to the China Education Daily, who covered the press conference, the campus football project achieved some noticeable progress in the past three years. 

As of now, there are 20,200 specialist football academies nationwide, 12 experimental zones and 102 experimental counties and districts. The central government has invested CNY680m and provincial governments have invested more than CNY20bn. 

Wang Dengfeng, Head of the Ministry’s Department of Physical, Health and Arts Education, said at the press conference that the ministry plans to build another 30,000 specialist football academies from 2018-2025, bringing the total number of academies to 50,000. 

There are football competitions within schools, between schools and special competitions in the campus football events system. The number of students taking part in primary, middle school, high school, and university football events, as well as the number of the events, have both increased. There was a total of 10,040,800 participants in four levels of competitions in the past 3 years and 15,564 participants in the summer and winter campus football camps. 

The lack of football coaches/teachers and football pitches has been a major problem. The provinces and cities have tried to solve this problem by employing new coaches and offer training to existing coaches. A total of 230,000 primary and middle school headmasters, sports teachers, sports researchers, administrators and grassroots coaches and referees have received training across the country. The MOE also employed over 360 foreign coaches/teachers to coach in China and sent more than 1,100 campus football coaches to France and Britain to receive 3-month professional skills training. 

The MOE took over campus football development in China in November 2014 and in 2015 campus football was raised to a national strategy level due to government reforms    in the development of football in China. 

Source: China Education Daily 

Proofread by Raymond Fitzpatrick