Melbourne, Australia-based BIG Esports announced Monday that they nearing completion on funding approval to develop and deploy a pilot program for high school students with an entrepreneurial focus on esports in the state of Victoria.
If approved, the pilot program is set to kick off in Term 4 of 2021, featuring one class of Year 9 (14-15-year-old) students and will run for approximately nine weeks. The point of the course is to teach students about what it takes to run an esports competition or event, with a focus on important building blocks such as establishing a business, sponsorship proposals, esports industry knowledge, branding, event operations, influencer marketing, internet security, and more.
With the goal of giving students “hands-on” training and educational opportunities, BIG has partnered with peripheral maker Razer and PLE computers to help build out an esports room with 26 gaming-grade computers. The pilot program will accept around 25 students in its initial roll-out, but both BIG and Wyndham Tech School plan to run the course during the 2022 school year on a larger scale.
BIG’s Bianca Santos and Tenielle Lynch are working in conjunction with school staff members to develop the program. Santos worked for five years as a games development & IT teacher in TAFE, but also has a history in running high-school video game events and tournaments with the Monash Computer Games Bootcamp, Chisholm TAFE’s Tech Games Fest, and Flaktest Gaming. Tenielle helped to coordinate the University of Queensland Union’s high school esports program.
Editor’s note: The story has been adjusted to reflect that the program still has some minor approval processes to meet before it is officially and fully approved.
