Asia Rugby’s Project Asia 1 Million got an enormous boost when rugby was officially included in the curriculum in all UAE public schools.
Asia 1 Million | Impact Beyond 2019
Project Asia 1 Million is part of Asia Rugby’s Impact Beyond strategy to grow the participation numbers in Asia to 1 million player by Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan in September 2019.
UAE Rugby Federation
UAE Rugby Federation’s Sami Smara, UAERF Development Manager played a pivotal role in working with the UAE Ministry of Education to include the Get Into Rugby programme as part of the Physical Education curriculum.
The UAE Ministry of Education published the first rugby workbook in early January 2018. “Including rugby in the curriculum means that all public school students will take part in rugby in future.
“Participation numbers are likely to rise to over 200 000 Emirati boys and girls in the UAE in the next 2 years.” said Sami.
The 60 pages document covers areas such as the basics of the game, drills, variation games, fitness, teamwork and values. Below are some extracts from the book.
Get Into Rugby
The official implementation started on 10/01/2018 when the Ministry of Education conducted 20 Get Into Rugby training courses simultaneously across the country.
Over 400 teachers were trained in one day. Sami Smara, who is also in charge of UAERF’s Training and Education Department said that more of these Super-Days would be run until all public school PE teachers were qualified to coach rugby through the GIR programme.
