Our Computing Curriculum

At Belle Vue 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 children to be creators, not just consumers of technology and our broad curriculum encompassing computer science, information technology and digital literacy reflects this. We want our pupils to understand that there is always a choice with using technology and as a school we utilise technology (especially social media) 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 school has a comprehensive progression document for staff to follow to best embed and cover every element of the computing curriculum. The knowledge/skills statements build year on year to deepen and challenge our learners. On the whole teachers deliver one explicit Computing lesson a week, particularly when covering Computer Science objectives however, we feel the majority of computing should be embedded across the curriculum allowing children to apply their knowledge and skills creatively, therefore there is a flexible approach to timetabling and delivery throughout the school.

We base our computing curriculum in the 'Mr. P. ICT' scheme of work. The following document, produced by Mr. P. ICT, shows the skills pupils will develop as the progress through school.