Tech companies including Google and O2 will support a £3.6 million campaign to improve the teaching of computing skills in England’s primary schools.
The Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, will announce the partnerships at the BETT educational technology show later today.
In her speech, Morgan will say that schools should be better connected to technology firms and announce a series of projects linking schools, universities and businesses to strengthen the computing curriculum.
The initiatives will include a university consortium, including Queen Mary University London and Hertford College, Oxford, which will collaborate with Google to produce training materials to encourage the development of “computing-related thinking skills.”
O2 Telefonica will offer a peer-to-peer training scheme to assist with the curriculum and Oxford Brookes University will develop a massive open online course (MOOC) designed for primary school teachers.
In a smaller project, Our Lady’s Catholic High School in Preston will work with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to support other schools with computer lessons.
The Department for Education is offering £3.6 million in matched funding to support the new projects.
➤ Tech firms support computing lessons [BBC News]
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Read more: BBC Reveals New Coding and Computing Content for Kids
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