Premier League Primary Stars to help educate children in schools

The Premier League has announced its "most ambitious community programme" to educate primary school children.

Premier League Primary Stars will support 10,000 primary schools in England and Wales by 2019, and the programme will be available to every primary school in both countries by 2022.

It will offer a range of bespoke curriculum-linked teaching resources aimed at Key Stages One and Two, including lesson plans, activity ideas, work sheets and video content. It also aims to provide 60,000 free books.

Each teaching pack uses real life sport examples to put the lesson content into a context relevant to and engaging for children, with clear teaching instructions which ensure that the resources are easy to use.

"This is a whole new way of approaching things," Richard Scudamore, Premier League executive chairman, told Sky Sports News HQ.

"There are full materials for schools, it's clubs getting into schools with their coaches, it's free books, it's free kit, there are all sorts of stuff going on to try and make a big intervention in people's education.

"It's really unfair on the clubs that they don't get the deserved reputation for the work they do, an enormous amount.

"This is 88 professional clubs we've got engaged in these type of programmes. There's no other country in the world that does this to this level, or to this scale."

"Football is one of those brilliant ways to use maths," said Rachel Riley, Sky Sports presenter and mathematician.

"We use it in the real world. We use it in football, when you look at stats of players and go away and put it in real life."

"The Premier League getting involved gets children excited about books," said Cressida Cowell, author of 'How to Train Your Dragon'.

"It gets children thinking it's something pleasurable, rather than something that school is telling you that you have to read."