How teacher Emily ‘Perkz’ Perkins, Leicester City FC and the Life Multi-Academy Trust are transforming school esports in Leicestershire

Emily ‘Perkz’ Perkins (pictured left) has had one of the most unusual yet inspiring stories in UK esports.

Over the past 18 months, Leicestershire secondary school physics teacher and lead practitioner Perkz has gone from being mistaken for the pro League of Legends player of the same name, to embracing the scene, working with Cloud9 to streaming her own content.

Now she is bringing her newfound knowledge of esports to her students, recently gaining approval to build a new esports arena at Countesthorpe Academy, one of the schools in the Life Multi-Academy Trust. She has also seen her students at Bosworth Academy win their first esports trophy at Leicester City FC’s King Power Stadium. Dom Sacco asks her about the new arena, championing esports at a school level and her aims to get more girls interested in esports, and gets the lowdown on LCFC’s plans.

‘Countesthorpe Academy is going to have the most beautiful esports arena ever seen in a school’

Plans for the academy’s esports arena have not long been approved, and the hope is to get it open in September or October 2022.

While esports rooms and arenas have become a trend in colleges and universities in recent years, they’re not the norm in schools – yet.

Alva Academy set up the first high school esports suite in Scotland earlier this year, and now Countesthorpe is following suit.

The Leicestershire school esports arena will have 26 machines, allowing students to take part in internal competitions between the various schools in the Life Multi-Academy Trust (MAT), as well as the national British Esports Student Champs for school and college students (in games like League of Legends, Valorant, Overwatch and Rocket League).

There are also plans for the Esports BTEC qualification to be taught from the arena from 2024 for college students.

The arena will also be bookable by the public, for running LAN events, team-building exercises with companies and also children’s parties, though the school said it’s not running it for a profit, but for educational benefits for students.

Emily ‘Perkz’ Perkins told Esports News UK: “It’s going to be the most beautiful esports arena I think people have ever seen. It’s going to be amazing. A lot of colleges for 16+ students have arenas, but there are very few schools that have an esports arena. So we’ll be providing esports opportunities to students as young as 11, and also outreach into our primary schools. 

“The school has invested quite heavily in this arena, it’s a large investment. Yoyotech is building the arena for us and I think they’re using a Hong Kong-based company called E-Blue to fit it out. 

“Everything we’re doing is about enriching 11 to 16 year olds and allowing them opportunities to use the passion they have for esports to develop their educational profiles. We’re hoping what we get is people who are doing traditional A-levels or the Esports BTEC. One, because they’re interested in it, and two, because it’s really broad and they get a taste of lots of things in the industry that they might want to take further.”

Perkz said the trust has also been in talks with Leicester City Football Club.

“Leicester City would like to run 11-a-side esports tournaments [at the arena], perhaps in the view of setting up a professional team – they have a FIFA Pro Clubs group that young people can join, and they have a pro FIFA coach.

“They’re looking at ways to reach out into their community and have obviously seen that young people are into esports and gaming, and to make this programme bigger.”

Leicester City: ‘We want to support anyone in our community interested in esports as a hobby or a career’

Leicester City in the Community (LCitC), the charitable arm of the Leicester City Football Club (LCFC), recently brought secondary schools from Perkz’ Life Multi-Academy Trust to take part in a FIFA 22 esports competition on June 10th 2022 at the King Power Stadium one evening.

Students from Countesthorpe Academy, Bosworth Academy and The Winstanley School took part, with Bosworth winning the schools tournament and a year 8 student from Countesthorpe Academy called Jake winning the individual competition.

The tournament was a round-robin style with six rounds. And halfway through the event, LCitC delivered an online safety workshop focused on how to spot and avoid phishing scams on gaming platforms and social media like Discord and Twitch.

“Leicester City FC contacted me as they’re developing more outreach for the community, and one of the ways they want to do that is through esports,” Emily said.

“I organised an event at each of those schools where Leicester City and the community came out with PlayStations and had an in-school competition, with the top eight players then being invited to the King Power Stadium for the evening inter-school competition.

“The top three players at each school won some gaming mice provided by HyperX and Razer, so that was a significant value to them. And at the King Power Stadium we invited some parents along, and we had 27 kids battling it out for their schools and for themselves to win the individual tournament.

“It was good, the kids were engaged and were trying really hard, it’s important to them. A lot of the students are in year 11, so they were in the middle of their exams. It was an opportunity to relieve a bit of pressure from that, although it was a competition. So it was fantastic, actually, and it’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while.”

Dr Alex Evans, environmental sustainability coordinator and esports contact at Leicester City in the Community, sent additional info to Esports News UK, saying: “Our community esports programme is growing fast and we’re very happy to be working with people such as Emily Perkins to provide opportunities for people in Leicester to play games in social settings, both casually and competitively.

“As one of the largest hobby industries and fastest growing spectator sport audiences in the world, we want to support anyone in our community that is interested in esports as either a hobby or as a possible career.

“We have a developing FIFA 22 Pro Clubs squad (including some players that took part in the recent schools tournament) that train with our esports coach weekly, and who have now taken part in online tournaments with other community teams around the country.”

This summer, LCitC is also hosting an esports coaching camp at King Power Stadium for young people interested in gaming.

‘One of our aims will be to get 50% engagement from girls and marginalised genders’ – Emily Perkins

Emily Perkins also spoke about her goals in esports as a physics as a teacher and, specifically, around diversity.

“I think it’s absolutely fantastic that an organisation I work for has taken something very random that happened to me, has allowed me to run with it and has seen the opportunities there are for young people,” she said.

“One of our aims will be to get 50% engagement from women [and other, marginalised genders]. So that’s a massive target and will be very difficult, but we’ll do this, whether it’s hard or not. It’s about visibility, we want to be inclusive and we want girls to play. And it helps that I’m a girl as well, I think. I find that in physics, if kids have a girl physics teacher, we’re more likely to get girls choosing to study physics at A-level. 

“It’s also about reaching those different a niches and bringing them together. Playing FIFA was a very different group of kids to the kids who played Smash Bros, and it’d be a different group of kids who play Minecraft.

“I’ve also been asked by my students to open a D&D club as well! I think I’m the resident geek (laughs). It’s about providing spaces for people who don’t always engage with school in maybe a traditional way. They might not play sports or get involved with other clubs and things, because they might feel that they don’t fit into those categories.”

To conclude, Perkz commented: “What we’re trying to do as an organisation [overall] is try and future-proof our young people. I think the MAT has seen this is an area of massive growth, it’s an area kids want to get involved with, they want to find careers in this space and there are careers available for them. I’m very proud I work for an organisation that instead of saying, ‘no’, they’ve said, ‘yes, let’s go with this, this is a fantastic opportunity for our young people’, and they’ve invested so much into that.

“Many jobs our year 7 students will have don’t yet exist. Esports is such a growing industry, I think there will be jobs in there for them. So it’s about giving them those opportunities.”

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.