As a football-loving country, we in Scotland had been keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best for more than 22 years -until that famous night in November when the national men’s team reached a major international tournament for the first time since the 1998 World Cup in France.
The resilience required to be a fan has been nothing short of remarkable, with so many near misses and broken dreams, and now at last our time has come. The children of today may not appreciate the significance of David Marshall’s save, but their excitement and sheer delight at qualifying for UEFA Euro 2020 (as it’s still being called, despite Covid delaying it by a year) enables educators to make enjoyable and meaningful links to some of the trickiest aspects of our curriculum.
Big international football tournaments can help children to explore the world around them and, more importantly, begin to understand their place and identity in that world: the children can learn about people, languages and cultures in other countries, and in doing so develop an appreciation for the diversity in our world.
Coronavirus: ‘Football helps pupils to face the challenges of Covid’
Opinion: Why football can be a powerful force in education
Quick read: Alex Ferguson’s management tips for schools
Research: Use football to engage working-class boys, say academics
Sporting chances: What education can learn from football
When a football legend returned to his old school: ‘Sir Alex was here - it’s absolutely massive’
The Scottish Football Association (SFA) Learning Through Football resource, as one example, provides several exciting ideas for standalone projects or programmes of work centred around Euro 2020.
Learning from Scotland’s football triumph
By exploring roles in football, children can also learn about skills needed for the workplace. Many children dream about making a career from their love of football. However, when they discover the range of careers both off and on the pitch, it no longer seems like a pipe dream. Football resources like the SFA’s help children to build key life skills such as organisation, communication and leadership. It would be very hard to teach these in such an exciting way in the classroom without the context of our football heroes.
To give children the best possible chance in life, it is vital that they have good communication and numeracy skills, and the world of football provides several varied contexts to explore and enhance these.
From producing oral and written match reports to the drama of match commentary, football can help children to work with high-level skills. Through budgeting trips across the world and predicting Scotland’s success based on the statistics of previous games, the children are guaranteed to experience success with complex but fun numeracy activities.
Steve Clarke’s Scotland team have become superheroes in the eyes of Scottish children, and education has been given an opportunity to engage them with curricular activities in relevant and meaningful contexts.
Broad themes allow for true child-led learning, in which children can drive the learning. Football may provide the context, but the pupils will lead the way.
Jacqueline Church is principal teacher at Miller Primary School in Glasgow
