Primary eSports

Why eSports in Primary Schools?

'The reason we're here today is a celebration of esports, specifically in the primary age. Esports is often, I think, celebrated. Events are held for secondary pupils and further. So what we're trying to do here at Samsung today is just bring that down to start at an earlier level for the children so they can see there's opportunities out there for me. If this is an interest of mine, where can I take it? And also if I've got a specific skillset, where will I celebrate that? I think that's what we're doing today. We're celebrating children's specific skills.'

Pip Bhol
Digital Learning Lead
Kings Cross Academy

What preparations are required for eSports to be successful?

'The whole process was really exciting. We started a few weeks ago with the whole school and all the teachers participating in the tournaments. Each class would have a tournament and come up with the best five students in a Mario Kart game. And then we continued with those tournaments and we got to the final six. So everyone was involved'

Katarzyna Suliga Wasielewska
Computing Lead
St Joseph's RC Primary School

How can eSports develop news skills?

'It's getting those kids who aren't necessarily the child you may pick for doing those sporting events in a different type of event. So it's inclusion, allowing everyone to participate in an event, represent their school, and compete in a genuinely competitive event. I've had many conversations today about resilience with the students today, simply because they've done well at the event, and then maybe they haven't done quite as well, and we have to try and manage that and work on how do we move on from maybe a disappointment or even from a really great moment. So that's where we're looking at teamwork, resilience, persistence, perseverance, working together with the team, planning, and making those smart decisions. There's a lot of strategy within esports. You may not realise it, but there is a lot of strategy.'

Nic Hughes
Computing Lead
The Raglan School

How does eSports relate to future skills development?

'I think some of these children will likely have careers in tech at some point. We heard a really inspiring talk earlier from someone in the gaming industry, so that will inspire these children to want to work in that industry. But that, just teamwork is a really useful skill for them to learn, and being resilient is also really crucial for them to learn at this age'
Daniel Brearley
Computing Lead
Lancasterian Primary School

eSports example of jobs.mov

'I work at Jagex as a product manager for the game 'Old School RuneScape', which is online in the online world. As a product manager, I'm really in charge of working with the developers and the artists and the various teams to solve problems within the business, which could be selling more copies of a game or getting people more connected or improving the content of a particular level, anything of that nature. So, really, the ethos of the product is that you're working with different teams. So that's where I feel I can really speak to all the kids about just keeping your options open and not looking at game development as if it's just programming, but it can be so much more'

Alessandro Penno
Jagex Product Manager

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