Esports Tournament
About.
Ukie's Digital Schoolhouse powered by PlayStation, delivers its annual esports tournament to schools & colleges across the UK. Through participation in this immersive careers experience, students aged 12-18 years develop practical and soft skills in professional esports roles, crafted by the video games industry for education. Skills that students develop whilst participating in the tournament are recognised by the Duke of York’s Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (iDEA).
In this year's tournament, we engaged over 5000 students who fulfilled a breadth of roles including players and production crew. Featuring school heats, 8 live events and one explosive grand finale, this is careers education with a difference. If you want to get involved in our 2020 tournament, please register your interest here.
Digital Schoolhouse's landmark report provides evidence that participating in the tournament can help to engage your students with developing digital skills and broader soft skills, in addition to enabling them to aspire to career pathways that they may not have otherwise considered.
Sign up here to express your interest in joining our esports tournament (commencing September 2019).
How does it work?
The tournament is broken down into four stages.
STAGE 1: SCHOOL HEATS (4 September 2019 - 31 January 2020)
This is the initial stage of the tournament which takes place in the school or college itself. Schools are encouraged to make this stage as student led as possible. In addition to the players, job descriptions have been developed with industry expertise for schools to implement; enabling teachers to recruit students in a number of Operations & Logistics roles. The aim, to ultimately whittle down the competing teams to a single team that will represent the school or college at the Regional Qualifiers.
This stage of the tournament is not timebound. Digital Schoolhouse only request that the school champion is selected in time for the next stage of the competition.
STAGE 2: REGIONAL QUALIFIERS (February 2020 - March 2020)
These are the first of the knockout stages, held in various locations across the UK. Each participating school or college will be allocated to their nearest venue by Digital Schoolhouse.
Video games industry guests are invited to attend and encouraged to mingle amongst competitors. Each qualifier is streamed live on Twitch and students are invited to shoutcast alongside professionals on the day. At each qualifier, a single team is crowned ‘Regional Champions’ which then goes through to the North/South Semi-finals.
STAGE 3: NORTH/SOUTH SEMI-FINALS (MARCH 2020)
The North and South Semi-finals are a new addition to this year’s tournament! Here, the Regional Champions compete for the chance to represent their school in the Digital Schoolhouse Grand Final. Only the best 4 teams from each Semi-final can move to the final stage. How will you fare against the other Regional Champions?
STAGE 4: THE GRAND FINAL (APRIL 2020)
The Grand Final is hosted in London as part of the London Games Festival. Here, the Regional Champions compete for the winning title of Digital Schoolhouse's 'UK Esports Champions'. In attendance are their peers, teachers, parents and industry guests. The day concludes with a prize giving ceremony for the winning team and a special award for the 'Best Shoutcaster'.
Esports: Engaging Education
How is esports relevant to computing education? How does it help us achieve our mission to revolutionise computing classrooms across the country? Find out in our landmark report which examines the impact of the tournament on students, teachers and schools.
NEW! On the Road to Victory: our brand new esports video series out now!
Get involved.
Registration for the 2019 esports tournament have now closed.
Have some questions? We've answered them here.
Interested in sponsoring the Esports Tournament 2020?
To find out more, please get in touch with the DSH team.
Fancy being an esports coach?
Esports coaches will be linked with schools to impart their expert knowledge of gaming and esports; providing anything from hints and tips to strategy and tactics. Please sign up to receive more information when applications reopen in the coming months.
Photography by Joe Brady.
