St Martin’s pupils gain digital confidence

The initiative began three years ago and takes place across all primary schools on the island between Years 3 and 6, and has even delivered sessions to some secondary schools and the Sixth Form Centre.

Year 5 teacher Sandra de Sousa said it helped deliver an essential part of the ICT curriculum, with coding being taught by professionals.

‘We as teachers are also learning from what they know,’ she said. ‘It also teaches them resilience because things don’t always go to plan with coding, and creativity, teamwork, reflection, critical thinking and independence, which are the foundations of our learning powers. These things lend themselves to other areas of learning.’

Ralf Meijer, head of PwC’s Hive Academy, said: ‘These children are going to need much more digital skills than ever before when they leave school. It also helps us to recognise what we can do to make things easier for our colleagues.

‘We need more computer science students and the earlier exposure does help. We also want teachers to feel more confident in teaching it.’

He said the team were usually quite busy with schools, and available sessions were usually snapped up quite quickly. PwC were in the forefront of hosting sessions in schools.

The students were really engaging in the session.

Kiara Forrest, 10, Oliver Norman, 9, and Zachary Newstead, also 9, said they all enjoyed it.

‘At the moment we’re doing debugging and loops. I think the teachers could do it,’ said Kiara.

Zachary was also learning new things.

‘Debugging takes problems out of the sequence,’ he said.

‘I like it when they come in to teach us.’

The aim of PWC Hive Hackers CI is to inspire, encourage and prepare children for a world of technology through exposure and education. About 4,000 school children have completed the programme, with about 100 staff volunteering their time to deliver it.