Intent

At St Bede’s we want pupils to be MASTERS of technology and not slaves to it. Technology is everywhere and will play a pivotal part in students' lives. Therefore, we want to model and educate our pupils on how to use technology positively, responsibly and safely. We want our pupils to be creators not consumers and our broad curriculum encompassing computer science, information communication technology and digital citizenship reflects this. We want our pupils to develop resilience when dealing with technology. We want our pupils to understand that there is always a choice with using technology and as a school we utilise technology to model positive use. We recognise that the best prevention for a lot of issues we currently see with technology/social media is through education. We recognise that technology can allow pupils to share their learning in creative ways. We also understand the accessibility opportunities technology can provide for our pupils. Our knowledge rich curriculum has to be balanced with the opportunity for pupils to apply their knowledge creatively which will in turn help our pupils become skilful computer scientists. We encourage staff to try and embed computing across the whole curriculum to make learning creative and accessible. We want our pupils to be fluent with a range of tools to best express their understanding and hope by Upper Key Stage 2, children have the independence and confidence to choose the best tool to fulfil the task and challenge set by teachers.

The national curriculum for computing aims to ensure that all pupils:

• can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer

science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation

• can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
• can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
• are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.

Implementation 

At St Bede's, we combine both 'Espresso Coding' and 'Teach Computing' to ensure we are covering all areas of the Computing Curriculum. Children being each year in Autumn Term by focusing on Computing aspects of the curriculum through Espresso Coding Units (e.g. Inputs, Repetitions, Variables and Loops).

The Spring and Summer terms are then spent focusing on the remaining areas of the curriculum through the National Teach Computing scheme of work. Thorough this, children learn about systems and networks, creating media and data and information. The scheme ensures that key skills are built upon throughout KS1 and KS2. 

Online Safety is taught discretely throughout the year. Online Safety is also taught through our PSHE scheme.