INTENT

At Shafton, computing is an integral part of our everyday life and will play an immeasurable part in our children’s futures.  Our Computing scheme aims to instil a sense of enjoyment around using technology and to develop pupil’s appreciation of its capabilities and the opportunities technology offers to, create, manage, organise, and collaborate.  Tinkering with software and programs forms a part of the ethos of the scheme because we want to develop pupils’ confidence when encountering new technology.  The computing curriculum we embed enables all of our pupils to continually develop their knowledge and skills from EYFS so that by the time they reach Y6 they will have had access and opportunity to use their knowledge and skills to create and manage software through using their knowledge of algorithms on and off the screen. 

Through our curriculum, we intend for pupils to be digitally competent and have a range of transferable skills at a suitable level for the future workplace and to be responsible online citizens. Our children are growing up in a fast-paced world with ever-increasing information, technology and readily available platforms. At Shafton, we must enable children to become critical thinkers so that they can use technology to enhance their future, know what is true, and stay safe online. At Shafton online safety is not just a unit taught in computing but a key fundamental principle that our children need to be aware of so they can become self-monitors of their use of technology, alongside school and home life monitoring so ALL children understand how to be safe online. 

Computing has deep links with mathematics, science, and design and technology, and provides insights into both natural and artificial systems. At Shafton the computing curriculum ties in with key topics taught throughout each year group therefore allowing children to gain cross curricular links whilst learning  the core of computing,  computer science. Pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work, and how to put this knowledge to use through programming. 

At Shafton one of our key missions and values is to help children to discover what is possible, to broaden their horizons and to help them discover a world of possibilities and opportunities. The Shafton Computing curriculum enables children to have access to all the knowledge, skills and critical thinking they need to transfer these skills into the workplace. We also want to enable children to opportunities to use new technology and gain experience through this as such technology may become dominant in their future. 

We at Shafton believe that through teaching the computing curriculum that we offer that we are not only helping the children to become digitally literate individuals now but that we are enabling them to have bright futures unblocked by the skills, knowledge and opportunities that we offer to them.