We were pleased to fund three new PCs for St. Nicholas’s ongoing update of their ICT suite. Like many schools, St. Nicholas has some aging hardware which causes a number of problems as Sue Brinded (Office Manager) explained:
“A whole class can use the ICT suite with 2 children at each PC, but 4 of our PCs are virtually unusable which makes whole class learning a lot harder as 3 children then have to share a PC. This is causing huge frustration amongst the teachers and pupils alike but in particular with our special needs’ and disadvantaged children who need instant access to resources to prevent them becoming disengaged with the learning process.
We would hope the disadvantaged children would respond well to having newer hardware and would be motivated to work hard and engage better with their learning without the constant crashing of sites which is currently happening.”
When used well, ICT aids effective learning and we fully support the use of ICT to enhance learning across the curriculum. Sue went on to explain how important their ICT suite is to the school:
“The PCs are used by our lunch club which is for the children who struggle at lunchtimes and need to have quiet time away from their peers. They are also used by our after school club to enable children to do their homework. We also run a coding club to develop skills additional to those learned in the classroom. Following the recent lockdown, we are aware that many families did not have access to laptops or PCs so these children will need to catch up and will be given time to fill in some of the gaps that they missed over the last 6 months.
PCs are not just used for computing but all other subjects as well, so it is vital that we have hardware fit for purpose to deliver the missing curriculum to those children as well as for the rest of the school”