St Brendan’s is a denominational primary school and non-denominational nursery in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire. The primary school has a roll of 245 and the nursery has a roll of 31 for 3 to 5-year-olds and a further 10 for 2 to 3-year-olds.

31.8% of children attending the primary school live in Social Index of Multiple Deprivation deciles one and two areas. 21.6% of children of primary age have an identified additional support need and 14.6% have English as an additional language. Currently, 15.2 % of children are in receipt of free school meals.

The improvement issue

In 2021, 67% of North Lanarkshire business respondents reported a digital skills gap within their organisations. As a result, senior leaders and staff decided to prioritise developing effective digital approaches for learning and teaching. Staff realised that they needed to develop children’s skills for life and work by increasing their opportunities for digital learning.

Staff had also identified a need to improve children’s digital skills during the pandemic. Although most children engaged with online learning, 12% continued to demonstrate little to no engagement. Staff had worked to equip all children with the progressive skills required to engage in digital learning experiences. This would help children and families to better engage in learning at home.

What St Brendan’s Primary did

Staff prioritised support to children to develop the foundational skills needed to use digital tools fluently and meaningfully. They also created opportunities for children to apply digital skills to achieve purposeful outcomes which demonstrate learning. Other improved approaches to digital learning and teaching used in St Brendan’s include:

• using identified core tools and digital platforms;
• digital tools for assessment and to support quality feedback;
• sharing recorded content with children allows them to learn at their own pace.
• independent learning approaches to promote home learning and maximise time for practise, assessment, and feedback in person;
• assistive media to support children with identified needs, with a focus on meeting their needs and removing barriers to learning;
• digital collaboration between children, classes and teachers using live tools; and
• improved consistency in how digital tools and resources are used by staff, to enhance pedagogy and learning experiences across the curriculum.

On a daily basis, children use digital technologies to access a range of content, create content of their own and communicate their thinking with others. A small number of devices are in each learning environment at all times. This helps ensure that digital approaches are a daily feature of learning and teaching. Children have increased access to technology through shared sets of devices, including a suite of tablets and a ‘Digital Den’.

Developing effective and consistent approaches to digital learning and teaching has required ongoing investment in professional learning. This has included:

• protected time for teachers to prioritise their personal learning needs in relation to digital technology;
• professional learning opportunities offered by the digital champion, during in-service and optional drop-in sessions;
• collaborative work with partners including the North Lanarkshire Digital School and visits to other establishments to see good practice; and
• accessing funding to develop approaches to and deliver collaborative professional learning with a specific focus on digital learning and teaching.

The school culture values digital learning and teaching and has prioritised this within school improvement plans in recent years.

What the sustained impact has been

Observations of learning experiences show that staff are using digital tools more effectively to support features of pedagogy. By making better use of recorded content to support individual learning, teachers are differentiating more effectively to meet children’s needs and protect time for quality assessment and feedback. Using digital tools to aid assessment is helping staff to gather more useful data around individual progress. This helps staff to give quality ‘in the moment’ feedback to children.

Children are increasingly demonstrating high levels of engagement and motivation towards learning in contexts where digital technology is in use. Children are positive about digital learning experiences. They report that they are developing new skills and use a range of digitals tools to support their learning.

An increasing number of children are making more effective or very good use of assistive technology to address barriers to learning, particularly in relation to reading and writing. This has resulted in improved engagement and attainment in writing for those children identified through biannual summative assessments. Data shows that the use of assistive technology to help increase children’s rate of progress is improving performance in line with average expectations for children’s age and stage of learning.