SCIENCE@home

School tasking in UK primary schools: widening access through early intervention and gameful design

Ali Struthers,Katie Jones

Published 2025 in Journal of Further and Higher Education

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT School Tasking is a successful, university-led primary school outreach programme in law based on the format of the hit television show, Taskmaster. It borrows the fun, interactivity, and gentle competition of the TV show to engage children in less-advantaged schools across the UK and Ireland with learning a little bit about law and connecting with university study more broadly. The programme has been designed for Year 5 pupils in widening participation primary schools and relies on aspects of both gamification and game-based learning. This article seeks to ask and answer the ‘why’ questions with regard to these two particular elements of the programme: (i) why are we working with children aged 9–10, who have not traditionally been the target age group for university outreach work; and (ii) why are the ‘gameful design’ aspects of School Tasking likely to be so integral to its success? On the first of these, we argue that primary pupils are at the ideal age for outreach initiatives like School Tasking, and interventions that begin only at secondary level can miss children who have already decided that higher education is not for them. On the second question, we argue that the gameful design aspects are likely to be contributing to both knowledge retention and, through the gently competitive nature of the programme, motivation to learn. We suggest, too, that gameful design can capture the enthusiasm and imagination of children to a greater extent than other forms of outreach work.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-25 of 25 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

  • No citing papers are available for this paper.

Showing 0-0 of 0 citing papers · Page 1 of 1