Primary Schools Cricket Programme

Nottingham High School outreach work, providing high quality cricket coaching and provision for local Nottingham-based primary schools who, otherwise, would not have access to such opportunities in cricket.

Aims

The aim is to provide cricket coaching and development opportunities for primary school children by sending Nottingham High School cricket coaches to work in 8 different schools over the summer months.

The 8 schools then come together in a celebration event and competition, hosted by Nottingham High School and staffed by Nottingham High School students and staff.

Background

There has been a long standing tradition at Nottingham High School of involvement in our local educational community.  Expertise, facilities and experience in cricket is something that we felt we could offer to a significant number of primary school children.  In the first year of the programme, back in 2008, of the eight schools involved five had no significant cricket history and only one of the five had played the game competitively.  Several years later, the cricketing opportunities have increased significantly due to this programme.  

Resources

Our cricket coaches (staff and students) will make upwards of 30 visits to eight local primary schools over the summer term. In many cases schools select different classes or groups for each session so that a large number of pupils in each school are given the opportunity to play cricket.

The festival, held in July, is held at Nottingham High School's Valley Road Playing Fields and is supervised by our staff and students, specifically our 'cricket leaders'.

Pupil Involvement

The coaching is generally aimed at pupils in Years 5 and 6. During one year 648 children - boys and girls - were involved in the coaching sessions.

The festival involves hosting 80 primary school pupils and will usually involve around 6 Nottingham High School staff and 6 of our senior cricketers.

Frequency

The Cricket in the Community coaching programme and Primary Schools Festival have been running annually since 2008.

As such success has been seen to date, we would envisage this programme continuing for many years to come.