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with the British Judo Association | |
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The BJA Schools Development programme was launched in September 2004 with funding from Sport England. The objective of the programme is to introduce judo into schools throughout the country, to feed significant numbers from schools into clubs and ultimately to turn participants into long-term BJA members. The Structure The objective of the programme is to initiate judo activity in schools and link this activity to local clubs to increase individual membership numbers and the number of lifelong judo enthusiasts. Our officers have been tasked with visiting schools, speaking to key decision-makers, doing demonstrations, and signing up new schools in which to deliver classes. We will deliver the sessions in the first instance while identifying qualified coaches to eventually take over the school, and ultimately we see clusters of activity being formed, feeding into clubs and sports colleges. We will insist on the highest levels of quality control and introduce state of the art coaching methods to ensure we have excellent retention rates. We will also actively push the BJA Schools Licence, which is a low cost licence that is valid for 4 months and hopefully will be the first step into Junior Membership. The course content is clearly aimed at the FUNdamental stage of the Long Term Athlete Development plan. We will continuously explore new and better coaching methods to keep young people on the mat. Children respond to quality coaching that is also fun – and we must always focus on this point. Obviously we will support this structure by becoming involved in various initiatives within the local area such as Area Youth Games. We will also work closely with clubs and commercial operators who are interested in becoming involved at the schools level to deliver our programme. This activity will complement our core activity – which is bringing judo to new sites. We must get our foot in the door of more schools to ensure we have an active stream of new members into our Association. 
The Story So Far The first six months of the programme has been spent visiting schools, doing demonstrations, lining up classes and forging links with our key support partners. These include Coaches, Clubs, Area Committees, County groups, the British Schools Judo Association, Sport England Regions, County Sports Partnerships, to name but a few. The Officers have attended numerous National, Regional, County and Club events networking and explaining the scheme and investigating the various systems to implement the programme. We have visited over 200 schools and have lined up new coaching sessions in over 50 of these. As you can imagine many schools have a long lead-time to get onto the curriculum or after school time table and we will begin to see the real benefits this September. Working Together - British Judo Association and British Schools Judo Association In the future the British Judo Association and British Schools Judo Association will be working together on the following;
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