Cricket brings calm to state classrooms

The Phrase "it's not cricket" is reverberating again around state school classrooms. Good old-fashioned cricketing values have prompted an improvement in behaviour in schools, according to the evaluation of a project to promote the sport in schools to be published later this week.

The "Chance to Shine" scheme, designed to promote cricket in state schools by sending in club coaches to teach the game, has had a spin off beyond PE lessons. According to researchers at Loughborough University, schools which have taken part in the scheme report improved behaviour in school generally as a result of participating in it.

The organisers of "Chance to Shine" are in no doubt that the club coaches who supervise cricket sessions in state schools have instilled the traditional values of the game in the pupils.

"With cricket there is very much a code of conduct and code of behaviour such as clapping if somebody gets a six even with the other side," said one teacher involved in the scheme.

"It brings in very positive conduct and way of behaving compared to other sports that are usually quite negative – such as football where they [the pupils] get easily upset or argue over decisions. With cricket, it is very much gentlemanly conduct."

The evaluation also says it has helped with the integration of different ethnic groups whose first language is not English. "A lot of our children have academic difficulties and we do find in sporting activities they may have a hidden talent," one school told researchers.

"A lot of our Bengali children may have English as an additional language but if you get them on a cricket pitch they are up there with their peers or even ahead ... It gives them a sense of self worth that they are good at something which raises their self-esteem."

The report says it has also helped cut truancy amongst disaffected pupils – with one school organising after-school cricket sessions for boys who had played truant in the past. "The teacher provided these sessions as a reward for good behaviour and attendance in school," it says.

At present the scheme is operating in 1,200 state schools. The Cricket Foundation, which runs the scheme, aims to extend it to 5,200 primary and 1,500 secondary schools by 2015.

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