Case Study - Cricket Development in Liverpool
A reward scheme for visiting your local club on a schools’ communication App has proved the key to getting children in Liverpool to pick up a cricket bat.
Mosspits Primary School in Wavertree has a firm commitment to physical education and when Lancashire Cricket Foundation visited recently – the staff wanted to capitalise on the passion for sport.
Using ClassDojo, a school to family communication App, pupils who took part in ECB National Programmes All Stars and Dynamos were rewarded with Dojo points. Both the school and LCF tracked the progress and in 2021 and 2022 a total of 47 children from Mosspits Primary took part in the scheme across five local clubs on Merseyside.
As well as national programme some children have been experiencing Under 9s and Under 11s cricket – with one parent contacting the school via email to explain. The family, completely new to cricket, are now fully hooked with their children playing weekly in the city and they’ve attended Emirates Old Trafford this summer to take in The Hundred.
The results followed delivery of schools’ cricket coaching in the school across year groups, with staff taking part in the sessions and training – so cricket can be delivered throughout the school year.
Steve Kelly, PE Coach and Sports Enrichment Lead, said: “We enjoy a great variety of PE and Sports are Mosspits – and the children have really taken to cricket in recent years. We were able to work closely with the staff at Lancashire Cricket Foundation to align our aims, particularly for transition to clubs with them.
“The increase in sessions, teacher CPD and the introduction and tracking of the ClassDojo reward scheme have all proved successful. We have been out to events at Wavertree CC, Sefton Park, Alder and SFX (Old Xaverians CC) – for many this has been the first time they’ve visited a cricket club and the events with Lancashire and LSSP have sparked the interest in the game even more.”
Greg Pennington, Cricket Development Officer, Lancashire Cricket Foundation explained: “We have been fortunate to have a strong working relationship with not only Steve, but all the staff across the school – and they have been beating the drum for cricket even when we aren’t delivering cricket in the school. Children wore sports kit recently for Health Week and there were All Stars, Dynamos, local cricket club shirts across the yard – which was wonderful to see.”
“Through our schools’ cricket programme, we will see more of Mosspits in the future, but it’s very rewarding to know that due to the drive of the school staff that cricket will remain high on the agenda at Mosspits.”
A parent from the school got in touch to say, "A couple of years ago, the school were very proacrive in getting Cricket into the curriculum. There were external people coming into run the sessions with the children. On the back of that, my kid signed up for a local club, long story short this summer they played their first season in hard ball cricket. In fact, enjoyed it so much he went to Emirates Old Trafford twice this summer most recently to watch England vs South Africa in the test."
"We're not previously a 'cricket family' so I've got to say the school sessions were instrumental in getting him into it, along with 'All Stars/Dynamos' sessions outside of school. I bumped into Greg Pennington at Emirates Old Trafford too - he's a Cricket Development officer for Lancs- he was really complimentary about Mosspits attirude to the sessions he, or his team, ran for the school".