While all careers are different, and our children will inevitably follow different paths, finding a job that doesn’t require digital skills is becoming a near-impossible task - whether someone has ambitions to be a doctor, lawyer, joiner, electrician, office manager or warehouse assistant, understanding how to use technology is a must.
As a school, we have a responsibility to best prepare young people for their adult lives, to equip them with the skills they will need as their education and career evolve.
Now is the time to embed change in schools so that the next generation is digitally advanced - and what happens in the classroom is the key to making that happen.
The Computing Pupil Ambassadors Scheme
At our secondary school, we introduced the Computing Pupil Ambassadors Scheme, working with our IT partner RM, which sees volunteer pupils aged 13-17 troubleshooting the technology needs of their peers, teachers and administration staff working in the school.
The senior leadership team wanted to equip pupils with skills fit for a digital age, but we knew this had to be done in an engaging way, while offering students a taste of the wider world of work they would soon be part of.
As in a workplace, pupils have access to laptops, desktop computers and mobile phones to answer queries that are generated from QR code posters available across the school. This is fed into a shared spreadsheet, accessible through any device, that alerts the ambassadors that a new IT inquiry or issue has been flagged via email. In turn, the whole team is quickly able to collaborate via the ambassador group chat to decide who is available to have a look and resolve the task. These issues can be wide ranging, from both pupils and teachers, covering everything from faulty screens and forgotten passwords to more complex issues.
A recent example involved a PE teacher who had their class projector “auto squint” itself. With the help of an ambassador, this was quickly resolved with a few setting changes. Then there was a laptop that was not allowing any keyboard shortcuts; this turned out to be due to the shift key failing. While the issue wasn’t able to be fixed solely by the ambassador, it was passed on to our school’s IT administrator and fixed by RM - showing how teamwork leads to results.
But one of my favourite examples was when we were setting up the school’s new media wall. After much head scratching, it was the ambassadors who were able to make it work. We now use this video wall to promote different aspects of our school to both staff and pupils, from club activities and stories about the school on social media to best practice for completing our ICT help form.
Empowering the next generation
Since the launch of the scheme, pupils have been given the opportunity to make important decisions as they would in the workplace. While not every child in the school can be an ambassador, we have a full pipeline of pupils wishing to join in; when the senior pupils were busy with exams, we had a wave of pupils volunteering.
We’re immensely proud of this. The scheme is empowering young people to take ownership of challenging yet rewarding tasks, but also provides the school with a win-win opportunity to improve our IT systems for all.
In many ways, students are a more digitally adept generation than us, but they often require structure to see the fruits of their skills. That said, this structure does require an element of technological understanding, which our staff possess. In the past, RM research has found that teachers felt a lack of training was one of their biggest challenges when using technology. These gaps in teacher knowledge inevitably have an impact on learners’ digital skills, so we aim to train and support our staff accordingly.
It’s great, though, to see confident young people taking ownership. They can really see the importance of technology and the role it can play in their everyday lives. I am confident that the scheme will help the life chances of students leaving Duncanrig from now on to become better than ever before.
Annette Alexander is the acting headteacher at Duncanrig Secondary School in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire
