Pri­ma­ry schools' foot­ball be­gins next week. This is a na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion that flies al­most com­plete­ly be­low the pub­lic radar and has lit­tle or no spon­sor­ship, but it is the one na­tion­al tour­na­ment for chil­dren of pri­ma­ry school age. It is cen­tral to our foot­ball for­tunes over the course of any sin­gle foot­ball gen­er­a­tion.

The league pro­vides the youngest co­hort of na­tion­al tal­ent (12 and un­der) with ex­pe­ri­ence of com­pe­ti­tion foot­ball, and the pride of rep­re­sent­ing their school, but it is not op­ti­mal­ly or­gan­ised or in­vest­ed in, when this is where we should be plac­ing max­i­mum in­ter­est and re­sources. The pri­ma­ry school age band (five to 12) is the bedrock of the foot­ball pyra­mid that has elite in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball at its peak. Our for­tunes at the top of the pyra­mid de­pend large­ly up­on what we do at the base.

While we are busy de­bat­ing the mer­its of the so-called "Granny rule" (Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill, 2025) and look­ing to re­cruit play­ers who have one grand­par­ent from Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are do­ing next to noth­ing for our youngest play­ers, those who will pop­u­late our fu­ture school, club and na­tion­al teams for a gen­er­a­tion to come.

The the­o­ry of every­thing

I do not care who wins the pri­ma­ry schools' ti­tles. My con­cern is the role of pri­ma­ry schools in our na­tion­al foot­ball. They are part of what is called "grass­roots foot­ball" - the am­a­teur or ba­sic lev­el of foot­ball, fo­cus­ing on par­tic­i­pa­tion, love for the game, and com­mu­ni­ty build­ing. This should em­pha­sise tech­ni­cal and so­cial skill de­vel­op­ment, and team­work. In our foot­ball cul­ture, schools play an im­por­tant role in grass­roots de­vel­op­ment, pro­vid­ing a plat­form for young peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate and progress in the game.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

The old­er one gets, the hard­er it is to learn. For this rea­son, we say "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". The age band of pri­ma­ry school chil­dren is gen­er­al­ly five to 12, which in­cludes what is called in ed­u­ca­tion the­o­ry "the gold­en age of learn­ing" - the years around nine to 12. This is con­sid­ered a cru­cial phase in learn­ing and de­vel­op­ing the fun­da­men­tals of any­thing.

In this phase, chil­dren ex­pe­ri­ence rapid cog­ni­tive de­vel­op­ment, growth of emo­tion­al ma­tu­ri­ty and in­creased abil­i­ty to think ra­tio­nal­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly about ab­stract con­cepts. There­fore, a prop­er pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion is fun­da­men­tal to suc­cess at fur­ther and high­er aca­d­e­m­ic lev­els (sec­ondary school and uni­ver­si­ty). If there are gaps in one's el­e­men­tary ed­u­ca­tion, for what­ev­er rea­son (poor in­struc­tion, ab­sen­teeism, lack of aca­d­e­m­ic ma­te­ri­als, bad do­mes­tic con­di­tions, etc), one will face ob­sta­cles to one's aca­d­e­m­ic progress. Im­por­tant­ly, this does not im­ply low in­tel­li­gence, which is the in­abil­i­ty to ac­quire, un­der­stand and use knowl­edge.

For this rea­son, pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion fol­lows a stan­dard­ised cur­ricu­lum and sub­ject syl­labi that are im­ple­ment­ed in every school and su­per­vised by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in or­der to max­imise the stu­dents' op­por­tu­ni­ty to mas­ter the fun­da­men­tals of lit­er­a­cy, lan­guage skills and nu­mer­a­cy. Well, so too in foot­ball. Ef­fec­tive coach­ing is re­quired if chil­dren are to ac­quire the ba­sics of the game dur­ing this "gold­en age of learn­ing" (that is, ba­sic in­di­vid­ual tech­niques, in­di­vid­ual and small group tac­tics, and el­e­men­tary prin­ci­ples of the game). If there are gaps in one's for­ma­tion as a play­er at this fun­da­men­tal stage, one's foot­ball per­for­mance will be af­fect­ed at old­er and high­er lev­els, and the re­me­di­al work re­quired is dif­fi­cult. Sub-max­i­mal aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance does not nec­es­sar­i­ly im­ply low in­tel­li­gence, and sub-par ath­let­ic per­for­mance does not nec­es­sar­i­ly im­ply lack of nat­ur­al tal­ent.

Cap­ture of the fun­da­men­tals in both aca­d­e­m­ic and sport­ing spheres de­pends on sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing ex­po­sure to ef­fec­tive teach­ers (coach­ing at this lev­el is teach­ing) who un­der­stand how chil­dren learn. This is called "ped­a­gogy" (peh-dah-go-gee) - the art and sci­ence of teach­ing, in­clud­ing teach­ing meth­ods and learn­ing the­o­ries. It is about un­der­stand­ing how knowl­edge and skills are im­part­ed and how learn­ing oc­curs. For this rea­son, pri­ma­ry school teach­ers and coach­es should be pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained per­son­nel.

A prop­er ed­u­ca­tion, aca­d­e­m­ic or sport­ing, is all about sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly lay­ing build­ing blocks. If we fail to in­vest in a prop­er foun­da­tion at the base of the aca­d­e­m­ic/sport­ing pyra­mid, we should not ex­pect to har­vest suc­cess at the top.

How the league works

The pri­ma­ry schools com­pe­ti­tion is based on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's sev­en dis­tricts (Ca­roni, North East­ern, Port-of-Spain and En­vi­rons, South East­ern, St George East, St Patrick and Vic­to­ria) plus To­ba­go. It is run by the Prin­ci­pals. The ef­fi­cien­cy of the op­er­a­tion very much varies by dis­trict. The league plays in two age groups for boys (Un­der-12, for chil­dren aged 11 and un­der and U-15, for those 14 and un­der), and one group (U-15) for girls. The ques­tion of why we have 14-year-old chil­dren in pri­ma­ry school aris­es but this is an­oth­er is­sue. The reg­u­la­tions for the younger di­vi­sion pro­vide for re­duced num­bers, small­er fields and small­er goals. To de­ter­mine the age group na­tion­al cham­pi­ons, the win­ners of Trinidad play the win­ners of To­ba­go.

There are fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions to the use of a dif­fer­ent for­mu­la, but hav­ing sev­en Trinidad dis­trict cham­pi­ons fight each oth­er to get to the na­tion­al fi­nal while the To­ba­go cham­pi­on qual­i­fies au­to­mat­i­cal­ly is un­fair. All eight dis­trict cham­pi­ons should play off from a quar­ter-fi­nal stage. A sec­ond is­sue that both­ers me is one of child pro­tec­tion - the in­clu­sion of a U-15 cat­e­go­ry. The fact is that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of U-15 play­ers are re­al­ly U-12 play­ers. This dou­ble du­ty, some­times on the same day, is a dan­ger to young bod­ies and does noth­ing for their tech­ni­cal de­vel­op­ment. TTFA's (T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) Safe­guard­ing De­part­ment needs to look at this and the broad­er mat­ter of safe­guard­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion be­cause, in­cred­i­bly, it is not a re­quire­ment for pri­ma­ry school coach­es.

The most crit­i­cal is­sue, if we agree that young play­ers of this ba­sic lev­el should have the best coach­ing pos­si­ble, is the fact that there is no min­i­mum coach­ing cre­den­tial re­quired of the coach­es who han­dle the next gen­er­a­tion of our play­er pool. Lit­er­al­ly any­one the Prin­ci­pal ac­cepts as suit­able finds him­self at the helm. And, in fact, as in many sec­ondary schools, a mod­el has been adopt­ed in some pri­ma­ry schools that re­duces the school pop­u­la­tion to a cap­tive mar­ket to be ex­ploit­ed as a source of coach­ing fees, of­ten by un­qual­i­fied per­sons. It has be­come a hus­tle. On the oth­er hand, many school teams do not train and just play, the "coach" of­ten be­ing the school's sports or games teacher, not a spe­cial­ist foot­ball coach. All of this has im­pli­ca­tions for our na­tion­al youth teams.

The im­por­tance of all of the above mul­ti­plies geo­met­ri­cal­ly when we con­sid­er the pri­ma­ry school girls' game and its re­la­tion­ship to our abysmal per­for­mance in in­ter­na­tion­al girls' foot­ball. In the re­cent Caribbean Foot­ball Union U-14 tour­na­ment, we field­ed two teams, in­clud­ing our "High Per­for­mance" out­fit. They fin­ished last and sec­ond-to-last in the same qual­i­fy­ing group. It was a dis­as­ter.

Our girls come to the game too late. Their for­ma­tion gen­er­al­ly be­gins in sec­ondary school. We can­not de­pend on the mag­net­ic at­trac­tion be­tween boys and a ball to bring in the girls, and TTFA has done NOTH­ING to or­gan­ise, grow and de­vel­op grass­roots women's foot­ball. Our fe­male youth teams com­prise large­ly girls who lack a prop­er foun­da­tion, who are sent by a ne­glect­ful TTFA to face girls who have been play­ing the game since "the gold­en age of learn­ing" and even be­fore, rep­re­sent­ing na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions that se­ri­ous­ly in­vest in women's foot­ball.

What we go do?

We are do­ing our very youngest play­ers and our na­tion­al foot­ball a huge dis­ser­vice by see­ing pri­ma­ry schools com­pe­ti­tion as mere recre­ation. If we se­ri­ous­ly be­lieve that foot­ball de­vel­op­ment and suc­cess are im­por­tant, the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport, and TTFA must do more and bet­ter. Here's the min­i­mum these three agen­cies should do:

1 En­sure prop­er or­gan­i­sa­tion and su­per­vi­sion of league op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing bud­get­ing for equip­ment, pro­vi­sion of match of­fi­cials, etc.

2 En­force a min­i­mum coach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ment for coach­es.

3 In­tro­duce foot­ball in­to the pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum, with qual­i­fied staff trained and pro­vid­ed by the agen­cies.

4 Es­tab­lish a na­tion­wide grass­roots de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme that in­cludes girls, in par­tic­u­lar.

Pri­ma­ry schools across the coun­try are the places where we find the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of pre-teens, read­i­ly avail­able for teach­ing and learn­ing, in­clud­ing sport/foot­ball in­struc­tion. They are our bedrock. We should ex­pose these chil­dren to the best or­gan­i­sa­tion pos­si­ble, and ef­fec­tive coach­ing by prop­er­ly ed­u­cat­ed coach­es, in or­der to arm them with the fun­da­men­tals of any sport/foot­ball. This will pre­pare them to climb the sport/foot­ball pyra­mid and to im­prove the qual­i­ty of our do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al sport/foot­ball. And Granny can­not help us with this.