No time to wait; digital competence must be a priority

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

Our world is changing so quickly that we can barely imagine the implications for our adult futures, let alone those for our young people.

That’s why the Digital Competence Framework was prioritised and delivered early as part of the new curriculum. The need for pupils and teachers to be confident and succeed in our digital world was clear.

So it is part of our National mission to provide all our learners with high-level digital skills; digital competence is one of three curriculum responsibilities alongside literacy and numeracy within our new curriculum.

Some schools have adopted the framework with enthusiasm. But all schools now need to be using it to best effect and I urge you all to do just that ahead of our transition to our exciting new curriculum.

Yes it can seem a challenge, perhaps more so for the secondary sector. But this does not need to be a threatening process. Training and support are available from Digital Pioneers, our guidance materials, and through your consortium.

To effectively deliver the digital requirements of the new curriculum, planning to apply the framework – if not already underway – needs to start now. By the Autumn all schools need to:

• have a clear vision for delivering digital competence in your school
• have established staff responsibilities for embedding digital competence across the curriculum
• have reviewed staff professional learning needs and hardware/software requirements
• be mapping digital competence against department/year of current curriculum
• have planned for and be delivering staff professional development.

The mapping tool on Learning Wales will help you see where you already have practice in place and where you have gaps.

And this doesn’t have to be a ‘big bang’ approach; taking on one or two strands of the framework as pathfinders can open doors to the way the rest of the framework can be implemented.

For the sake of our young people, I urge you to give this priority in the coming year.