Wednesday 25th March 09 saw Eblo (Enterprise and Business Links organisation) running a GCSE sports careers day at Thomas Becket with year 10 students. EBLO is a predominantly public funded organisation working in Northamptonshire which helps to bring businesses and schools together to support the wide range of work-related learning (WRL) opportunities available to students. EBLO sources companies wanting to work with schools and matches them with the needs of the school.
Northants Study Centres were asked to run some workshops to demonstrate how sport can be used across the curriculum and what sports-related jobs are available working with children but not necessarily in schools or in mainstream teaching. Other workshops were run by organisations (some of which the study centres work in partnership with) like Saints RFC, Cobblers in the Community, the Army, British Cycling, University of Northampton, Moulton College and Northamptonshire County Council’s Trading Standards.
Activities included: team/player anagrams, matching sports terms and definitions, (using speaking and listening skills) literacy NTFC programme trails and players maths cards. There was plenty of teamwork, sportsmanship and co-operation required. These activities gave an example of the kind of work the centres and ‘Playing for Success’ on the Road projects do, as well as getting the students thinking about using sport and their learning in a different way.
The two groups of year 9/10 lads participated fully in all the activities and were genuinely interested in what the Study Centres do and what our jobs involve. They asked intelligent questions and were motivated by the sporting context. Next year they will begin their GCSE PE courses at the school and hopefully this day gave them an insight into sport-related careers.
Anna Letts already works with Thomas Becket running The Double Club there with Beccy Roseman. Thanks to Beccy for supporting on this day. Both this project, and others, fits in well with the school’s specialist sports college status.
For more information about the school: http://www.thomasbecket.northants.sch.uk/
