Kane & Bellingham "wonderful role models" for pupils at Amesbury primary school
Pupils at King's Gate Primary are being inspired by England's run to the semi-finals
An Amesbury Primary school has told us its pupils have been captivated and inspired by England's run to the World Cup semi-finals.
The Three Lions, led by Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham, take on reigning World Champions Argentina tonight (15/7) for the right to face Spain in Sunday's final.
Victory would be England's first World Cup final since 1966, and a third major final in the last five years.
Alison Cocks, Assistant Headteacher at King's Gate Primary, said the tournament has been the hot topic of conversation amongst all the children.
"There's been lots of discussions in classrooms, in the corridors, on the playground, all about football and the latest results, obviously mainly for England, but just a general buzz around the school really, where children are really following the competition, talking about countries and players, which has been really great to hear, even down to our young children in Key Stage 1, they've been really following the football and getting quite excited about it," she said.
Kane and Bellingham have been key to Thomas Tuchel's side reaching this point, with the pair netting six times already, with Bellingham scoring four in the last two rounds to help defeat Mexico and Norway.
But Alison tells us they're "wonderful role models" for her pupils, saying they embody many of the schools core values.
"The children watch them, they admire their talent and their skill, but sort of more importantly for us really, they really model our school values," she said. "Recently we've been speaking about cooperation and teamwork and actually the World Cup has been a great platform to kind of really think about those values and model what that actually looks like and having role models that are players in the England team is great."
The tournament has also influenced events within the school, beyond conversation.
While the hot temperatures have limited the children's ability to be active, as they've been encouraged to seek shade and drink lots of water, the school holds a regular singing assembly.
Each class takes turns in choosing a song for the assembly, and there was a strong World Cup influence last week from a Year 6 class's choice.
"One of the songs they chose was Wonderwall, which of course has been being sung at the end of England Games at the moment," Alison said. "It was quite a nice moment in our singing assembly last week. We had the whole school singing along to Wonderwall So we're very much behind the England team here at King's Gate."