REPORT OF THE FIDE TRAINERS’ COMMISSION TO FIDE COUNCIL Q1 2021
INTRODUCTION
In December 2020 a new Chairman was appointed, and together with the Secretary and other Council Members, a review of the previous two years work was immediately started to set a direction for 2021.
The work in 2019 and 2020 – in terms of both implementation and reform – has been generally good but a number of incremental changes were agreed to be still needed, mainly to better communicate the way forward (here I wish to acknowledge and thank the previous Chairman for his work) but also to strengthen the administrative rules.
With these in mind, we have worked hard to develop new regulations that will allow us to move better forward and are also without controversy, in consultation with and guided by FIDE Management – here we especially thank the direct inputs of the FIDE President, FIDE Managing Director, and FIDE Legal Advisor – and which is now being submitted to the FIDE Council for approval.
These regulations will be the basis of how TRG meets the challenges of today and immediate future and are summarised in the areas below with our proposed actions marked in BOLD:
TITLES AND LICENSING
We estimate currently having well over 8,000 trainers in the system (having added more than 1,600 new trainers in 2019 and 2020) and we have been waiting for IT to complete their work – long delayed and very much overdue due to a seeming lack of resources – to give us the promised database to have both an accurate and exact number of licensed trainers.
This will be critical for us to understand better the mix of trainers, to communicate more directly with them, to develop benefits and to service needs – one immediate outcome is a new license certificate more officially recognisable is replacing the old badges.
We ask for priority to be given for our IT needs as without this shared accessible database (FIDE office, accounts, titles, IT and TRG) we are failing to effectively engage trainers and federations on key administrative matters including fee dues, certificate issuance, and website profile updates, and also to be able to assist with the implementation of data privacy compliance requirements.
ORGANISING
We have organised 59 FIDE Trainer Seminars in 2019 and 2020 and from April 2020 moving online and by region and language and here TRG here must acknowledge the hard work and great support of FIDE Marketing and Communications
In 2021 we will largely continue in the same way with a bigger focus to serve less developed countries and regions, ideally with support of the continental leadership – the two (2) seminars so far conducted in 2021 has been for Arabic Africa (26 participants) and Spanish Americas (56 participants) – and the response and feedback show that there is much demand.
We started having the first Professional Education & Development Workshops for trainer continuous education in 2020 and will be extending this program in critical areas of learning and adding credits towards licence renewals and possible title upgrades.
TRG is also going to expand our role to provide leadership in developing and implementing training programs with FIDE for both the development of young talent and to support grassroots programs.
ACADEMIES
It has been my predecessor’s challenge all 2019 and 2020 to rationalise the FIDE Endorsed Academy system.
Building on this work we have now understood well, from analysis of the 2020 annual reports, the situation with academies, whether long serving or new, and in our proposed new regulations are proposing a three-tier membership which will give the academies in each category the respective rights and obligations to flourish in their core work.
With this in place we hope to be able to better service and support the academies as our development partners, and one very successful direction has been to work with select academies in the organising of FIDE Trainer Seminars, workshops and camps.
FIDE TRAINER AWARDS
These awards are for both trainers and books and while we did not have the trainer awards in 2020, the book awards, after removing any possible conflicts of interest, has gone on from strength to strength.
In 2021 we have restored the trainer awards, making achievements in both 2019 and 2020 eligible, and expanded the categories in reaction to the changes in chess today and this includes a prodigy award for the trainer of a U-14 player, for a great player’s first coach, the best academy, and for online training innovation.
OTHER PROGRAMS
We continue to cooperate, assist, and to learn from our fellow commissions in any way we can – for example with EDU, already sharing with them all our organising experience, processes and documentation but also thanking them for contributing a didactic teaching module – and we have to acknowledge our constant seminar, workshop and content partners DIS, WOM, EVE and MED.
Should there be an Online Olympiad this year, we are ready with a captaincy support program for 30 teams.
Mikhail Kobalia
TRG Chairman
12 April 2021