Reigate Grammar School, a private school situated in the rolling greenery of Surrey, England, has launched a state-of-the-art esports hub on its campus.
The hub includes 24 fully kitted gaming PCs in a renovated IT room that will act as both a teaching space and a gaming facility for the school’s esports club. It makes Reigate Grammar School one of a select few high schools in the UK to have such a venue.
The esports hub was made possible by a donation from Andy Paul, CEO of gaming hardware manufacturer Corsair, who attended the school and wanted to give back to the students there. Corsair donated its gaming PC build kits as well as top-notch curved gaming monitors, keyboards, controllers and gaming chairs to use in the room.
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“[The school] called me up one day and said hey, we’ve got this computer room, we wondered if we could get some keyboards because we want to do esports,” Corsair CEO Andy Paul told Esports Insider. “So I said, ‘well, what exactly are you gonna plug these keyboards into, because when I was there those were some pretty outdated computers’.”
Paul worked with the school to find a solution: to donate top of the line PCs to plug those keyboards into, alongside all the other gear that comes with an authentic gaming setup. Paul and other Corsair employees held a workshop with the schoolchildren, who built the PCs themselves under Corsair’s guidance. Each computer case is signed by the kids who built it. The school, meanwhile, paid to renovate the room in order to modernise it and adopt a gaming aesthetic.
The venue is an investment from Reigate Grammar School that aims to prepare students for future careers in esports and gaming, and the hub as a result has deliberately been set up to be multi-purpose. The space will be used for computer science and coding classes, visual design, art and photography, esports and game design modules and other teaching.
“We talk a lot to the children and their parents about how they’re preparing for jobs that don’t exist, for a world that we weren’t educated for, for a rapidly changing world — but what does that look like?” said Reigate Grammar School Headmaster Shaun Fenton. “Well, this is what it looks like. Where this Corsair project is taking them is into their future; they can see it, they can feel it.”
Andy Paul concurred. “This not only gets them in front of a computer and gives them computer skills — it also makes it a bit more fun,” he added.
Having access to esports enables students to tap into their interests in a school setting, reflecting a growing awareness of the benefits for schools of leveraging esports. Research by US scholastic esports non-profit NASEF has indicated that integrating esports into schools can improve student engagement as well as outcomes in terms of grades, communication skills and strategic thinking.
It also has the added benefit of ensuring kids are enjoying their time at the school. Fenton stressed student satisfaction and fulfilment was important not to overlook as a goal in itself. “We have children and teachers sneaking in and having the same reaction: ‘wow’. And as a Headmaster, you can’t ask for more than that. You want children who come into school and their emotional reaction to what they’re experiencing in school is ‘wow’.”
“I’m a headmaster and most of what I do is just annoy people. This has been the most popular thing I’ve ever done,” Fenton said with sincere excitement — “and I couldn’t have done it without the support of Andy [Paul].”
Corsair’s CEO said that while the company does supply universities, especially in the US, this collaboration came about out of passion and giving back rather than a commercial endeavour. “You can’t justify this from a commercial angle at all. It’s got to be done from a personal level. You have to do it with a mindset of helping education.”
Alongside education, the space will also be used by the school’s official esports team, the RGS CYBORGS, who now train in-person in an after-school esports club.
But the benefits of the Corsair Gaming Hub extend beyond the gates of Reigate Grammar School. Corsair’s donation was organised through the Reigate Grammar School (RGS) Foundation, a charity connected to the school that works to improve social mobility.
The wider community will be able to use the Corsair Gaming Hub at the school, RGS Foundation Director Jonny Hylton told Esports Insider. Local charity partners and local partnership schools will have access, particularly during school holiday periods, to make the most of the space. “It’s really about opening the doors of participation, and who knows what those children could go on to do,” Hylton said.
RGS also had an existing partnership with Lotus High, a low-performing school in Cape Town, South Africa. When Corsair donated its kit to Reigate, the school shipped the classroom’s existing computers and IT equipment to Lotus High for its students to use, alongside additional sports equipment and books. “The impact of one generous gift from Andy Paul and Corsair has transformed children’s lives on a different continent,” Hylton added.
Reigate Grammar School has shown a progressive attitude to integrating esports into its school, with internal support for the programme allowing it to overcome a common hurdle — sceptical parents and stakeholders. “Getting parents aware of the benefits [of esports] is the main thing. And that’s what’s happening here,” Paul said.
As a result, pupils are lining up for their turn to use the facility — passion that Reigate Grammar School staff said makes the investment instantly worth it. As one teacher put it: “Take away that [the kids having fun], and it’s just a room full of expensive computers.”
