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Feedback from the staff highlighted that their children had developed sportsmanship and fair play beyond their expectations.

Evaluation report

Dewsbury schools sports linking, 20014 – 2008

In a nutshell…

  • Dewsbury is a diverse area, but children from different backgrounds often don’t mix either in and out of school.
  • We delivered fun sports taster sessions in six schools for 195 children.
  • We then ‘twinned’ schools and asked them to host each other for shared sports sessions.
  • Over time, through playing sport together, children grew more positive about spending time with children from different schools and backgrounds.

We created opportunities for children from different ethnic and social backgrounds to play games together.

Six schools took part: it started with taster sessions in tag rugby, rounders, athletics, football, relay games, bench ball, parachute and fun team games over a 3-week. period.

We created clusters: two groups of three schools. In each cluster schools took turns hosting pupils from other schools to come and mix and play games with their their pupils. CUP ran the sessions, while teachers helped out taking photos and talking to pupils to find out what they thought.

It ended with a celebration – after 12 weeks of sessions each cluster held a celebratory festival of games. This was a chance for the pupils to compete together in mixed teams to show the skills they had learnt.

Our evaluation showed that

  1. All of the young people would carry on with sports delivered at the level they played at during the scheme.
  2. Pupils did not want to mix with pupils from other schools at the start of the scheme but were keen to do so at the end. Enjoying sport together and developing increased understanding of and respect for each other’s backgrounds made the difference.
  3. Young people are very curious about whether other people are different to them.
  4. Mixing and playing sport together helps to create community cohesion amongst young people, but more support is needed. This includes understanding about racism, cohesion and citizenship at an early stage.\ j

The project was funded through SRB 5, Neighbourhood Renewal Funding, Community Cohesion Funding, the Football Foundation, the Home Office (Active Communities Unit), Kirklees MBC and the Connexions service.

Read a more detailed report (from 2006).