Premier League Primary Stars - afPE interview with Nick Perchard, Director of Community

The Premier League and Nike have joined forces with Mason Mount and Chloe Kelly on Active Allies, a set of education resources developed to enable more girls to enjoy football with confidence. The resources are part of the Premier League Primary Stars programme which has engaged over 19,000 primary schools across England and Wales.

Did you know that 75% of girls have heard disparaging statements about them in sport? Or that 59% of girls have experienced or seen sexism when taking part in physical activity? It’s time this changed.

The rollout of Active Allies included the launch of the Premier League Primary Stars Kit Scheme, in partnership with Nike, giving primary school teachers the opportunity to apply for a free football strip for their girls’ team.

This season the Premier League has provided over 58,000 girls across England and Wales with free football kits, while the supporting school resources feature video messages from Chloe Kelly and Mason Mount for use school assemblies; and interactive resources for teachers, designed by experts, to encourage discussion and inspire allyship across all participating schools.

We interviewed Nick Perchard, Director of Community at the Premier League, to find out more regarding the Premier League Primary Stars Kit scheme.

Sue Wilkinson MBE, CEO of Association for Physical Education started off by asking “Can you tell the people watching a little bit about the Premier League Primary Stars Kit scheme, because not having a kit or not being able to be a collective team member is a real barrier.”

Nick’s response was, “When we started Premier League Primary Stars back in 2017, one of the things we wanted to do was help schools effectively by providing them with free football kits. Up until this season, we have distributed 7,000 kits to schools, utilised week in week out by schools’ teams, but one of the things we were getting fed back pretty consistently was this idea that actually the girls’ teams were being left with the hand me downs and we just didn’t think that that was acceptable. This season, we’ve distributed over 4,000 new kits to schools across England and Wales, with a specific focus on girls’ teams, so every school that is able to apply has to provide extracurricular activity specifically for girls and has to have a girls’ football team. It is all about that idea of feeling a part of something and breaking down barriers and providing more opportunities for girls, and fortunately we’ve had some really good feedback.”

To read the full interview, click here.

To watch the full interview, click here.

To visit the Premier League Primary Stars website, click here.