World Cup Teachers Overview

Oxfam Education
www.oxfam.org.uk/education
Oxfam Education
The World Cup: A Fair Game?

Teachers overview
In July 2014 the World Cup takes place in Brazil, with the whole world watching. But are all the
countries playing against each other in the world cup the same? The countries are very different, and
the people living there have very different incomes and life chances. Is this fair? This is not just a
question for the World Cup, but also for life more generally.
This resource uses the World Cup to engage pupils critically with the question is the world a fair
place? Through doing so, they will think carefully about one key contemporary global issue
inequality. They will compare statistics about the countries playing in the World Cup, including their
Fifa rankings and average incomes. They will learn more about Brazil, the host of the World Cup, and
a country where inequality has been a huge problem for many years. They will also find out more
about unrest in Brazil related to the World Cup protests have been held as many citizens feel that in
a country where basic services still need to be developed, large amounts of money should not be
spent on a mega-sporting event. And they will also learn that despite these protests, inequality in
Brazil has fallen, and they will explore the reasons for this.
These activities will support pupils to:
Use football to examine inequality between and within countries.
Explore footballers and other people who have taken action to make the world fairer.
Explore why people protest and examine news around the World Cup.
Consider how making new rules in football could make the game fairer.
Understand the causes, effects and solutions to inequality in Brazil.
The resource has been developed with independent activities linked to a variety of curriculum areas,
and to support pupils making a World Cup Fairness Display to show their learning to the rest of the
school.
Structure of the Resource
There are a set of core introductory activities which we encourage all teachers to use, to introduce
pupils to the World Cup and the concept of inequality. This includes a quiz and two interactive games.
There are also five activities themed to link to English, Maths, Geography, Citizenship and PE, which
teachers can chose to do independently or together.
To bring learning together, pupils are encouraged to build a World Cup Fairness Display.
World Cup Fairness Display
This will allow pupils to present their learning outcomes to the rest of the school. Each activity will help
pupils to create something to add to the display. There is also a PowerPoint containing a template for
teachers to use to help build this display.
Copyright Oxfam GB. You may reproduce this document for educational purposes only.
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Activity overview:
Introductory activities
These activities introduce the World Cup, Brazil, the concepts of inequality between countries and
inequality within countries, and what inequality is like in Brazil. We suggest that all teachers use the
introductory PowerPoint and one or more of the introductory activities. They will help pupils to use any
of the subsequent subject themed activities.
Introductory PowerPoint
Introduces pupils to thinking about inequality in relation to World Cup countries, what inequality
means, and how inequality is an issue in Brazil.
World Cup Quiz
Pupils examine information about Brazilian football and Brazils climate and answer
differentiated quiz questions.
World Cup Top Trumps
Pupils compare the countries playing in the World Cup, using their FIFA rankings, the countries
wealth and their fairness scores (which look at inequality).
Making Money game
Pupils will learn more about inequality in Brazil through competing to make money and explore
the challenges faced by less wealthy people in Brazil.
After using the introductory activities, there follow 5 subject themed sets of activities which teachers
could use some or all of to help develop ideas with pupils, and work towards completing a World Cup
Fairness Display.
English themed activities
For or against the World Cup
A role play activity exploring the benefits and disadvantages of hosting the World Cup.
In the news: protests in Brazil
Find out about how people have been using the World Cup to ask for change in Brazil related
to inequality.
In the news: World Cup media coverage
Research media coverage of the World Cup now to see if the protests are still happening, and
if the World Cup in Brazil is being seen as a positive thing or not.
Maths themed activities
Equal opportunities
Using fractions and probability pupils explore if all the World Cup teams have an equal chance
to win.
Comparing wealth
By comparing the incomes of World Cup countries using fractions, percentages and ratios,
pupils explore how much income inequality exists in the World Cup, and why teams from richer
countries are more successful.
Fairness scores
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Oxfam scores
Education
Pupils work with decimal numbers to look at the fairness
of World Cup countries, to
see if the countries playing have high or low income inequality. This extends to plotting graphs
comparing this data on the World Cup countries.
Geography themed activities

How much do you know about Brazil?
An opportunity to explore pupils existing knowledge and perceptions of Brazil.
Welcome to Brazil
Pupils explore inequality in Brazil by comparing 4 different Brazilian states.
Welcome to Sao Paolo
Pupils look at inequality within one Brazilian state, Sao Paolo.
Why is Brazil so unequal?
Pupils explore the reasons for inequality in Brazil.
Land grab!
A case study on sugar plantations in Pernambuco to explore how control of land contributes
towards inequality.
Progress in Brazil
A chance to look at the range of efforts of the Brazilian government to overcome inequality in
the last decade.
Better or worse?
Pupils look at the effectiveness of some of these initiatives on reducing inequality in Brazil.
Citizenship themed activities
Footballers taking action for fairness
Footballers in the public eye have taken action to ask for change when the world is unfair.
Other people taking action for fairness
Pupils look at actions taken by a range of other people to make the world fairer, exploring what
makes small and large actions effective.
PE themed activities
Fairer Football for All
Pupils explore scenarios when football is unfair. They think about how to change the rules to
make it fairer for everyone to participate.
Play your own fair game
Pupils put their rules into practice by running their own Fairer World Cup tournament.
Teacher background notes
A key aspect of the resource is helping pupils to understand the concept of inequality. Inequality
compares the amount of things some groups of people have in society compared to other groups. This
includes money, but can include other things like access to education or public services.
Inequality exists in many ways around the world. These activities focus on:
Inequality between countries.
There are huge differences between how much wealth a country generates. Some countries
are wealthy while others are extremely poor and have large scale poverty.
Inequality within countries.
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Within countries, some people will always earn more
than Education
others. Inequality is much worse in
some places than others in some countries there are many people who only have a little and
a few people who have an awful lot.
Inequality is often measured by something called the GINI index, which looks at the distribution of
income across the whole of the society being considered. Therefore an index of 0 means income is
spread completely equally between everyone (all people would earn the same amount of money).
Conversely an index of 1 means the opposite one tiny group of people would have all the income
and everyone else would have none. In the resource, we refer to this as a fairness score and explain
to pupils what this means. A lower score (closer to 0) means more fair, and a higher score (closer to 1)
means more unfair.
Inequality globally has been increasing over the last 20 years, both between countries and within
countries. This includes within some developing countries but also some developed countries, such as
the UK.
Data sources
GINI indexes can be calculated in different ways, and therefore different sources may give slightly
different numbers. Please refer to the World Cup Maths Statistics Worksheet to see the source of
data for the inequality statistics used throughout this resource. This is from the Standardized World
Income Inequality Database.
It is important to be aware that inequality statistics are often from different years for different countries,
therefore whilst it is possible to use them indicatively to compare countries, they are only indicative
and for true comparison data from similar years and sources are necessary. Please make pupils
aware of this.
GDP per capita
The resource also asks pupils to look at the wealth of a country. In this resource we use the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for each country. The GDP basically means the amount a country
produces in total in monetary terms every year, calculated in US dollars. This is divided by the
population, giving a per person value (per capita). In the resource we call this the average income per
person per year. The data source is also listed in the World Cup Maths Statistics Worksheet and is
from the World Bank (2012).
Terms of use
Copyright Oxfam GB
You may use these photographs and associated information for the educational purposes at your
educational institution. With each use, you must credit the photographer named for that image and
Oxfam. You may not use images and associated information for commercial purposes or outside your
educational institution. All information associated with these images relates to the date and time that
project work took place.
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The World Cup: A Fair Game?

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