Leicester schoolchildren have been finding some unusual new uses for the world-famous Welford Road Stadium.
Pupils from Krishna Avanti Primary School have swapped the classroom for the home of Leicester Tigers over the past eight weeks in an effort to cement the lessons they’ve been learning at school.
Four different groups of year three students have used the stadium’s facilities to learn about topics as varied as coordinates – using the Holland & Barrett Stand’s seats for an impromptu game of battleships – to the biology of how grass grows.
Other sessions have made use of the Captains Concourse on the ground floor of The Robin Hood Stand to learn about statistics, as well as map reading and other maths problems.
"There’s almost an unlimited number of things that we can do to link learning to sport."
David McDonald
Denham Kite, head teacher at Krishna Avanti, accompanied one of the groups and explained why the sessions delivered in partnership with the club’s community team are so valuable.
“This makes it just that bit more real,” he said. “There’s lots of really rich and engaging information here so that our children are learning in a real-life situation as opposed to sitting in a classroom which doesn’t necessarily mean quite as much.
“We’re making sure that we cover all of our children in year three, so there are four different groups who will each have at least two different sessions here to cover different parts of the curriculum.
“Leicester Tigers is such a brilliant club with a great history, and I’m very keen about getting children out of the classroom and being inspired by places like this.”
The initiative is a continuation of Tigers’ partnership with Krishna Avanti, which hosts training sessions for the club’s Swifts development programme.
David McDonald, education and engagement manager at Leicester Tigers, added: “This is a great way to try and link education and sport.
“We do quite a bit with Krishna Avanti, and a lot of their pupils are in our Swifts team, so we thought this fitted really well with us.
“They’ve responded really well, and find it exciting just to be here and learn about the history of the club.”
The club now hopes to expand on the project and offer similar sessions for other groups.
McDonald continued: “We’d ideally like to take this out to other schools and offer it to them on a termly basis.
“There’s almost an unlimited number of things that we can do to link learning to sport.”
To find out more about the education opportunities offered by Leicester Tigers, email David McDonald on [email protected] or call 0116 217 1320.
