Watford FC midfielder and France international swapped the football pitch for a primary school classroom, as he visited Year 6 at Parkside Community Primary School for a one-off Mental Health education activation. The visit was arranged by Watford Football Club’s Community Sports and Education Trust, who engage several primary schools across Hertfordshire and Harrow.
The session was the culmination of a competition to support Children’s Mental Health Week. Primary School pupils were challenged with designing cartoon characters in the style of Disney’s Inside Out 2, representing the four Premier League Primary Stars Values – Be Connected, Be Ambitious, Be Inspiring, and Be Fair. The winning entry came from Vinnie, a Year 6 pupil at Parkside Community Primary School, hence the special visitor.
The Inside Out 2 resources came via the national children’s mental health charity Place2Be. Place2Be’s Children’s Mental Health Week joined forces with Here4You to explore the importance of self-awareness and expressing emotions. Here4You is supported by The Walt Disney Company, and through the characters of Pixar’s Inside Out 2, the resources encourage children and young people across the UK to discover how getting to know who they are can help them build resilience, grow and develop.
Armed with the resources, the competition was run by the Trust as part of their local delivery of the Premier League Primary Stars programme. The Premier League Primary Stars programme has reached over 19,000 schools and more than 70,000 teachers since 2017, reaching around 1.3 million pupils in the 2023-24 academic year alone. At the heart of the Premier League Primary Stars programme is a commitment to empowering teachers and inspiring pupils. Premier League Primary Stars offers every primary school in England and Wales over 650 free curriculum-linked resources across subjects like PE, PSHE, English, and Maths.
The session at Parkside was led by the Trust’s School Sport’s Project Officer Nicola Burton. Linking the session to football, the pupils became their own emotional referees identifying how they felt in different scenarios, with discussions highlighting how everyone has different reactions and the importance of being aware of their own emotions. Moussa Sissoko then joined the event to surprise the competition winner, Vinnie, take part in a question and answer session with pupils, and of course get a team photo! The winning entry also appeared in Watford FC’s matchday programme when they took on Norwich City at Vicarage Road Stadium on Saturday 1st February.
Nicola Burton said:
“We had some fantastic entries in our Children’s Mental Health Week competition, thank you to everyone who got involved and congratulations to Vinnie on his designs. It was great to be able to reward Vinnie and his school friends with today’s session. You could tell that the children found this both exciting and inspiring, and they really engaged throughout. Thanks also to Sissoko who helped add that star quality to our session.”
To find out more about Premier League Primary Stars visit www.watfordfccsetrust.com/premier-league-primary-stars/ and if you know a school that would benefit from this initiative, please contact nicola.burton@watfordfc.com
