The £20,000 investment means that the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) and its network of Computing Hubs will continue their work with primary and secondary schools across England for the next two years until summer 2025.
The NCCE was set up four years ago with £84m of DfE funding and is run by a consortium made up of STEM Learning, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and BCS – the Chartered Institute for IT.
Since 2018, it has delivered CPD for more than 60,000 teachers and educators while 7,300 teachers have received more than 10 hours of subject knowledge training via its Computer Science Accelerator programme. More than one million Teach Computing Curriculum resources have been downloaded by schools since September 2020.
One of the key aims for the NCCE moving forward will be to improve the numbers of girls who go on to take GCSE and A level computer science, which has remained stubbornly low.
Schools minister Nick Gibb said: “The digital industry makes a vital contribution to our economy. To ensure its sustainability, young people need the aspiration, knowledge and skills to succeed. As such, it is vital that our computer science teachers are trained to teach the latest digital skills, ensuring young people across the country benefit from a high-quality computing education. The NCCE gives teachers the subject knowledge and support they need to teach the computing curriculum.”
STEM Learning is a non-profit organisation dedicated to raising young people’s engagement and achievement in STEM and which offers education and careers support to schools.