While the course content and resulting qualification will be exactly the same as any other Level 1, this will be open exclusively to female coaches or those who will be coaching women’s or girl’s football.

Our aim is to help accelerate the recruitment of female coaches and support the development of girls’ football by offering a course aimed specifically at those involved in this area of the game.

In announcing details of this course, Hertfordshire FA Coach Development Officer Danielle Evans said:

“Feedback suggests that one of the barriers to more women seeking to gain a coaching qualification is a perception that they would feel out of place on a course where the significant majority of learners were male. We wanted to see if we could help change that by offering a Level 1 course focused on the female game.”

“The FA has a target to increase female participation in football by 2020 and while there has been strong increase in the number of girls playing, the number of women coaching has not seen the same growth. Getting more female coaches involved is vital to delivering this objective and we hope by taking an innovative approach we can help achieve this”.

Sharing expertise to support development

The course will be led by FA Affilliate Tutor and Hertfordshire FA Football Development Officer Kieran Fox, who has extensive experience in coaching girl’s football, having been involved with the Arsenal Women’s elite development programme for a number of years. He said:

“While the fundamentals of football are the same regardless of who is playing, it’s fair to say there are subtle differences in approach that you might take in coaching different groups. For example the social dimension can be quite different for girls in terms of how they communicate and build relationships with teammates.”