Do you deliver a BTEC National in Sport qualification? Do you offer a leadership qualification for your learners? The LTA Tennis Leaders qualification will provide the opportunity for learners to develop their leadership skills within a tennis environment.
If you deliver unit 5: Sports Coaching, Unit 13: Leadership in Sport and/or Unit 23: Organising Sports events, you could adapt the LTA Tennis Leaders course to deliver part of the content and meet some of the assessment criteria for the respective units.
The LTA Tennis Leaders course is the first step on the tennis and sport career pathway for volunteering and potentially, employment. It has been designed to offer a wide range of opportunities for young people providing them with enhanced leadership skills and experience. It can also be used to train and deploy leaders within colleges to support enrichment activities and intra-college competition.
We know colleges want to prepare learners for work, college and life generally. Tennis can provide opportunities for learners to develop a variety of transferable skills and build confidence through vocational experiences. A number of colleges are now using tennis to train, develop and skill their learners for the future, giving them a step up when it comes to higher education or career pathways.
Many Further Education colleges across Great Britain are now benefiting from a range of support and resources from the LTA and Tennis Foundation to grow tennis provision in colleges. Tennis is being used in a variety of ways to enhance the ‘Student Experience’ and as a tool to enable learners to both enjoy tennis and to learn through the sport. Colleges are now including traditional tennis, Short Tennis and Cardio Tennis on their enrichment and sport study programmes.
In addition to expanding the opportunities available for tennis on site, colleges are also building links with community tennis venues and signposting opportunities for their students to play, compete, volunteer and coach.
Tennis Leaders must be delivered by qualified and active teachers/ lecturers or licenced and registered tennis coaches, there is no specific training required. All you need is the Tutor Workbook and Tennis Leaders Workbooks which are available free of charge by contacting the Tennis Foundation Education Team - education@tennisfoundation.org.uk
There are five Tennis Leaders modules:
Introduction to tennis (core module); Volunteering at your tennis venue; Leading a practice session; Helping at your school; & Helping at a competition.
Complete the core module first before working through any of the additional four modules. As a minimum, to receive their free certificate and T-shirt, learners will need to complete the core module plus one additional module.
For more information about the Tennis Leaders modules and content please visit the website page Tennis Leaders
Once you have trained up your Tennis Leaders they can be deployed to gain some valuable experience supporting at local schools tennis festivals and competitions or community tennis events. Why not contact your local School Games Officer and offer to support the planning and delivery of a School Games Year 3&4 Mini Tennis Red competition. You could also contact your LTA regional office to link with local tennis venues and coaches, as they can offer additional community volunteering or work experience opportunities.
The Tennis Foundation’s Further Education Tennis Programme is aimed at growing and sustaining the number of young people aged 16 to 19 years participating, competing, volunteering and coaching tennis.
The Guide to Further Education Tennis provides an overview of the Further Education offer in more detail, as do the Further Education Tennis webpages / promotional film.