Digital Schoolhouse first began to explore esports as a tool to improve educational impact and attainment in 2016. Its pilot saw 4 secondary schools and 460 students participating in the first official national schools-based esports tournament. Now, it’s the largest tournament with over 1100 teams and 10,000 students participating from over 69 schools across the UK in 2020.

As the tournament grows and becomes more successful, the impact is clear. Teachers have reported improvements to student wellbeing, improved attendance to school as well as academic attainment. Students have been clear on the impact it has had on their attitudes as well, with 94% of students reporting an increased interest in computing and 88% more interested in career opportunities within the video games and esports industry.

With so much success at the senior level, our thoughts began to turn to our more junior learners. Can we introduce this immersive career education to our primary school pupils? Esports in primary schools, how would this work? What would a successful model look like? Would it have a similar impact on pupils or different to those experienced by the more senior students? All these questions and much more began to circulate in our minds.

Thoughts and plans around developing a junior esports tournament have been ruminating since 2018, when we first began to see a demand for it from our Schoolhouses. The pandemic delayed the initial pilot and forced us to reconsider our model and approach to one that works with school-based social distancing restrictions. As a result, the model implemented in this pilot is a significant evolution of what we originally had in mind. This evaluation examines all aspects of our Junior Esports Tournament Pilot, from the resources developed and tournament logistics to pupil attitudes. The evaluation ends with several considerations for DSH to take forward when implementing our first national Junior Esports Tournament 2022.