​In another Bethany ‘virtual’ first, on Wednesday 18th November, Sherrick Hamilton, Head of Computing and IT Services, hosted a Computer Science Curriculum Day in partnership with the Society of Heads. 27 schools joined the event from across the UK, which started at 10.00am with a webinar for Computer Science subject leaders. In this session, attendees heard from Steve Kenny, Head of Computing and IT subjects at AQA and Ceredig Cattanach-Chell, Subject Advisor for the Computing Suite at OCR. Both presenters talked about what their respective exam boards had to offer as well as providing insights into the changes to the curriculum this year due to the pandemic. There were many questions and comments from attendees throughout the event, and some very positive feedback was also received. As we have learnt from the last few months, it is important to keep up to date with exam board news in order to provide the best quality of teaching to our pupils.

In the afternoon, we were able to host another session where we shared our journey of using Microsoft 365 within Bethany over the last few years. Sherrick was joined by Francie Healy, Emily Hill and Claire Mills who shared their perspectives on our journey including the lasting legacy of Covid-19, our remote and blended learning provision, accessibility and Microsoft 365 and using Teams in the classroom. It was a well-received presentation with lots of participants asking follow up questions. We hope to keep this networking going in order to share good practice, advice and support.

What did attendees have to say?

It was a priceless session, one of the most useful I have attended.

Excellent day, all sessions were useful.

Immensely useful! This is a really good event with a great range of speakers. Every section was incisive, relevant and filled with genuine honesty on the challenges faced and approaches taken.

Lizzie Norman,
Marketing Manager