Developing pupils’ digital skills

Ysgol Gyfun Bryn Tawe is a Welsh-medium secondary school for 800 pupils between 11 and 18 years old.  The school is situated in the north of Swansea and 30.2% of pupils live in the 20% most disadvantaged areas in Wales and 10.6% are eligible for free school meals.  Twenty four per cent (24%) of pupils are on the school’s additional learning needs register and 1.8% have a statement of special educational needs.  Around 10% of pupils come from Welsh-speaking homes and nearly all pupils speak Welsh fluently.  The school has a Welsh-medium language, speech and communication unit for primary and secondary age pupils in the city and county of Swansea.  

Context and background to the effective or innovative practice

The school has a clear vision to develop its pupils’ advanced digital skills by ensuring that all leaders are part of planning the digital learning continuum with the school’s digital council.  They also focus on developing a digital learning continuum for all pupils in their cluster by working closely and frequently with its partner primary schools.

Description of the nature of the strategy or activity

The first step was to identify departmental opportunities to develop pupils’ advanced digital skills, and these were mapped against the Digital Framework.  Under the leadership of a member of the senior leadership team and the digital co-ordinator, time was invested in planning rich tasks jointly with heads of department.  The focus of planning was to create purposeful tasks to promote subject learning, in addition to nurturing pupils’ advanced digital skills e.g. in the humanities, a database was created by using ‘Access’ software to interpret the effect of immigration in Britain in 2015.

An audit of staff’s professional learning needs was carried out in order to provide them with training as they provide the best digital opportunities for pupils.  In order to support the professional learning needs that were raised through the audit, weekly voluntary lunchtime session were held to develop staff’s digital skills in addition to individual training for staff.

In order to develop more consistency in the advanced digital skills of pupils in the cluster, the cluster working group agreed on the main advanced skills to be developed.  Following this planning, the school’s ‘Digital Leaders’ have provided successful training for the primary schools’ ‘Digital Wizards’ to improve their own advanced digital skills.  In order to avoid duplicating primary schools’ work at the beginning of Year 7 and ensure consistency in pupils’ digital skills, a programme of digital lessons was planned and purposeful training was provided for primary schools.  This ensured that the primary schools in the cluster developed the same digital skills and that pupils had common experiences before they arrived at the secondary school.

The cluster’s digital working group has organised and held twilight training sessions for staff in the cluster, and some external agencies have also contributed successfully.  The selection of activities was based on the strands in the Digital Competence Framework and the professional learning requirements of staff in the cluster.  As a follow-up to training, all departments were asked to provide at least two rich digital tasks that developed pupils’ advanced digital skills.

The school invests significantly continuously in developing its digital infrastructure, software and resources.

What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?

Detailed planning to improve pupils’ digital experiences has had a positive effect on the confidence of the school’s staff.  As a result, staff provide challenging and exciting opportunities to develop pupils’ advanced digital skills.  Elements of the numeracy and digital frameworks are woven into lessons successfully.

There has been significant improvement in pupils’ use of the advanced digital skills across the subjects e.g. functions in Excel, producing graphs when analysing data, databases, coding, analysing performance, animations, e-befriending, creating algorithms, creating and editing videos by using green screen, ‘flipgrid’ and flow programmes.  Pupils use a variety of software more confidently and skilfully.  Pupils take pride in their use of the advanced digital skills in their day-to-day work at the school.

The work of the ‘Digital Leaders’ is far-reaching within the school.  They have trained the primary schools’ ‘Digital Wizards’ in advanced digital skills.  Their vision has a very positive effect on the continuous campaign to improve pupils’ advanced digital skills.  As a result of their work, the school has gained ‘Microsoft School’ status.

How have you shared your good practice?

The cluster’s digital working group meets every half-term to self-evaluate the term’s/year’s work and plan improvement for the pupils’ learning progression.

Digital Leaders presented their work to the school governors so that they were also a part of planning to develop pupils’ skills.

As part of evenings to share good practice, staff are given opportunities to present and see examples of each other’s digital tasks.  The digital leader is available during registration to meet with individual staff to develop their skills further.

The school has shared its practices to develop pupils’ advanced digital skills with a number of schools, both locally and nationally.