Chris Tolson, Headteacher at The Academy at St James said “ Computing is a subject our children really enjoy and one that gives them a wide range of important skills and knowledge for the future. To begin with, we struggled to deliver certain aspects of
the curriculum as we needed to support staff with the subject knowledge and pedagogy required to deliver this. Working with the Innovation Centre and Tim Bleazard, we re wrote our curriculum with the staff and supported them through regular CPD sessions. We
have also been supported by courses delivered by the National Centre for Computing Education.
We looked at all the different aspects of computing. For example, in Computer Science we worked to plan a sequence of learning which was designed to teach skills and where end points were clear and showed success for the pupils.
The staff have been great and through the fantastic leadership of our subject leader we have taken the time to embed this properly and improve staff confidence in delivering a subject which staff traditionally found harder to deliver.
Our computing subject lead has inspired, supported and driven the subject with a relentlessly positives attitude but also a determination that our children deserve the best and we are now seeing some wonderful computing outcomes and pupils enjoying this
subject.
I am very proud of this award and the progress we have made. For me, it shows the importance of implementing things correctly, valuing staff leadership of a subject and ensuring the subject of Computing itself is seen as important by everyone in the school.
This is an award we can all be proud of and I am delighted that we have been recognised for our commitment to Computing.”
Rebecca Smith, Computing Lead at the school commented ”I am so incredibly proud of this award, which reflects the hard work, commitment and determination of the whole team to make our Computing curriculum what it is today! We have been on a journey to develop
and improve our Computing provision over the past three years and it is a great honour to be recognised for the curriculum that we have implemented.