The Promotion of Physical Literacy through an “Active Classroom” Environment: A Case Study of the Manchester United Enterprise Foundation

Abstract

Most people think football clubs such as Manchester United as providers of sports entertainment; however, the workings of English Premier League Football Clubs goes much wider than playing football and developing world class football players. Many clubs now recognise that their Brand identity can provide them with additional revenue opportunities, such as the creation and delivery of educational programmes. Sports science is one obvious area where football clubs, such as "Manchester United", have become recognised as world class developers of elite athletes through the implementation of their specialist training and coaching techniques. Many of these training techniques are now being developed into programmes e.g. Move with Manchester United and are being delivered across the National Curriculum at both primary and secondary levels. Alongside the development of sports programmes, leading football league clubs have identified other educational areas namely Enterprise and Employability, as opportunities where they can add value through the enhancement of children's educational experience. In this paper we aim to provide an insight into how a leading premier league football club, namely Manchester United, has developed an educational programme which combines both Enterprise and Physical education through an "active classroom" environment. We aim to demonstrate that a leading football club can successfully develop and implement curricular based programme which develops both elements of Entrepreneurship and Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS). For this pilot study, 22, year 5 pupils aged 9 -10 were put through a 9 week programme and were assessed against a range of 14 foot on the ball, dribbling. Pupils were assessed on their ability to Master each of the 14 skills before and after the intervention of the programme. Results indicated that through the intervention of the programme, pupils showed a significant improvement in 6 out of the 14 fundamental movement skills. These results indicate that organisations, such as leading football clubs, can play a pivotal role in the development and delivery of the educational programmes such as that described in the case study. This could be of potential value to educational policy makers when deciding on how to best allocate resources into both primary and secondary education.