The Academy at St James has been recognised for delivering high-quality computing education to young people, developing their digital skills and preparing them for the future. The Computing Quality Mark is awarded by the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) which recognises excellence of computing education. The team at school have worked hard to develop their Computing curriculum and are delighted that they have been recognised for this award!
The school completed all seven aspects of the CQF in order to receive the Computing Quality Mark, which recognises achievement in:
The National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) is funded by the Department for Education and supporting partners, to improve the provision of computing education in England.
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 rewrote our curriculum with the staff and supported them through regular CPD sessions.
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 positive 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, Teacher and Computing Lead at The Academy at St James 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 curriculum over the past 3 years and it is a great honour to be recognised for curriculum that we have implemented.”
And finally, Tim Bleazard, Computing Consultant and Subject Matter Expert said:
“It’s been great to work with The Academy at St James over the past five years both through Bradford Council’s Curriculum Innovation team and the National Centre for Computing Education. Under the subject leadership of Rebecca Smith, the headship of Chris Tolson and the amazing work of all staff, Computing has thrived. Staff have taken on so many challenges to ensure children have engaging and challenging Computing lessons and cross-curricular use of technology. St.James used the free Computing Quality Framework tool to demonstrate they deliver exemplary practice in their computing curriculum and procedures.”