The Maidenhead United FC Community Trust have been running the Premier League Primary Stars programme for last two years, which is funded by The Premier League Charitable Fund.

The community team have engaged with pupils from seven schools in the local area.  Working with children in PE lessons, as well as English, Maths and PSHE to develop their skills in these areas.  Our partner schools have engaged with the Premier League’s poetry competition and we had some fantastic pieces which were submitted to the main competition. Our work is focused around the four Premier League Primary Stars values which are: be ambitious, be inspiring, be connected and be fair.  As a club we have fully bought into these values and we use these them in all our coaching.

One school had the chance to design their own plastic free and eco-friendly stadium linking in with our plastic pollution project. Our aim of this project was to reduce the amount of plastic that the pupils used in school and home, focusing on the small changes they could make which would impact the planet in a big way. One class teacher said, “I think it was a great opportunity for children to talk on global issues as the majority of the children may not have discussions at home about these issues.” As well as our plastic projects, we also worked on mental and physical wellbeing with pupils discussing healthy eating and specifically what our Maidenhead players would need to eat on a matchday. By doing this, we hope we have impacted children’s lives and shown them how to have a healthy and balanced diet to support an active lifestyle.  

We have held inter school tournaments, engaging with 13 different schools and are always well received by the pupils.  Whilst the tournaments are competitive, fair play is promoted throughout and it is a great way to bring the children together developing on the skills they have been practising at our popular after school clubs.

It wasn’t just the pupils that we focused on, as the teachers have received support in their PE lessons through the mentoring programme and this year alone, we have worked with 11 different teachers.  The aims of the provision were to increase the confidence and knowledge of teaching PE and giving them new ways to engage with pupils and assess their learning. The progress made by the teachers was great to see and we hope they are continuing to deliver brilliant PE lessons.

Thank you to The Premier League Charitable Fund for providing funding for us to deliver this fantastic programme of activities within our local community.  We look forward to continuing this programme with our partners schools and engaging with even more pupils and teachers to be ambitious, be inspiring, be connected and be fair.