Pioneering students from St Vincent College in Gosport transform into Sharks to become celebrities

The BTEC courses in Esports at St Vincent in Gosport have attracted 56 SEN (special educational needs) students who have moved from the college’s School of Personalised Learning (SPL) to study alongside mainstream pupils

But IT and Esports lecturer Martin Birch-Foster says all his students aren’t just playing games – they are developing transferable skills that can lead to university, apprenticeships and jobs in the IT sector.

“Some of the parents were unsure about the course at first but we’ve been able to show them that when you break down the units of what they are learning, the playing games side is very little,” said Mr Birch-Foster. “Otherwise it’s a business, media, sport and IT course. We spoke to some universities and they said they would take people from our Esports course on to degree courses.”

An Esports match pits two teams of players against each other over a number of different online games. They take place via a secure server and are overseen by the British Esports Federation. It is one of the fastest growing sports in the world with 1.2 million players and online spectators in the UK.

Mr Birch-Foster, 31,recalls how three years ago he found one of his BTEC level 1 IT students watching a game being played on YouTube while an Xbox console lay unused next to him. “I asked why they were watching it when they could play it themselves and they said ‘why do you watch football?’. That’s when I got what it was all about,” he said.

As interest in Esports developed among students he discovered the British Esports Federation was running competitions for schools and colleges. He was given a budget to buy three gaming laptops and the St Vincent Sharks were born. When the Sharks started playing fixtures at lunchtimes, students from across the college began coming to cheer them on. “It was amazing for them because SEN students don’t usually get to join the football teams because of the timetable clashes, their ability and their additional needs,” said Mr Birch-Foster. “But they became college celebrities.”