Pupils from St Richard's Catholic Primary School in Chichester have shown their support to the England football team after learning about the racist abuse some players have received. Tim Parsons, who teaches Years 3 and 4 said his students were 'saddened' when they found out about the online abuse following the Euros result. 

“It hit them quite hard, I think they were all shocked and quite sad about what they read,” he said.

“I said why don’t we express your sadness? Maybe we could design some posters, even send them off to the England football team which they got really excited about.”

“We put a simple video together which we could then share with parents or with their friends to not just support the players but I suppose just reinforce that important message of respect and that racism is not acceptable.”

Mr Parsons said that his class discussed the abuse directed towards Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka after watching a BBC Newsround episode. 

"I could see some of them looking confused, some of their parents told them about it and others were saying why would they do that? They’re English players? We started a whole chat about it, why have they done it? Why do people write abusive comments online? They couldn’t get their heads around it, especially since the team had done well and got to the final.

"At St Richard's, about 50 per cent of students speak English as an additional language, so it’s a very multicultural school. There’s a huge amount of respect from the children towards each other’s cultures and faiths."

"As a teacher, I am really proud of the children for being so keen to get that message across to the community and how passionate they felt about it."

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