Intent

At South Avenue, our curriculum is designed with the intent that each child becomes an ambitious, encouraging and resilient young person with a passion for learning and achieving. Through the teaching and learning of Computing, we encourage children to be inquisitive throughout their time at school and beyond. At our school we appreciate that technology is everywhere and will play a pivotal role in our children's lives. We want to model and educate our pupils on how to use technology positively, responsibly and safely. We want our children to become innovators, not merely consumers, and we aim to include a broad curriculum (which includes: computer science; information technology; and digital literacy).

We intend to build a computing curriculum that prepares pupils to live safely in an increasingly digital British society where pupils can evaluate and apply their computing knowledge, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems.

Finally, we aim to ensure our computing curriculum is cross- curricular, as much as possible, to allow for flexibility in the coverage but also so that children can see that computing can be used in other subjects (and that the skills they are learning are highly transferrable). This will result in our children understanding and appreciating that computing plays a large role in the 'real' (working) world and that they are well prepared for this when they are older.

Implementation

At South Avenue primary School, we follow Teach Computing which is a clear and effective scheme of work that provides coverage in line with the National Curriculum. Our computing curriculum facilitate progression across all key stages within the strands of digital literacy, information technology and computer science.

The children at South Avenue have access to resources which aid the acquisition of skills and knowledge that they require to prepare them for the future. Children have access to the hardware (computers, tablets, programmable equipment) and software that they need to develop knowledge and skills of digital systems and their applications.

Within the computing curriculum, children have the opportunity to explore and respond to key issues such as digital communication, cyber-bullying, online safety, security, plagiarism and social media. Wider Curriculum links and opportunities for the safe use of digital systems are woven throughout the curriculum. The importance of online safety is shown through displays within the learning environment and on the display screens of laptops. Parents are informed when issues relating to online safety arise and further information/support is provided if required.

Impact

• Children will be confident users of technology, able to use it to accomplish a wide variety of goals, both at home and in school.
• Knowledge organisers are used to enable children to assess their core knowledge within the computing units of work
• Children’s work is being saved on the newly constructed pupil drive to help evidence the progression children are making during their time at South Avenue Primary School in computing.
• Children will have a secure and comprehensive knowledge of the implications of technology and digital systems. This is important in a society where technologies and trends are rapidly evolving.
• Children will be able to apply the British values of democracy, tolerance, mutual respect, rule of law and liberty when using digital systems.