South Wilts Grammar School has been awarded CyberFirst GOLD status for delivering excellence in cyber security education. This is in recognition of the school’s commitment to computer science and cyber, its curriculum, student recruitment and progression, as well as engagement with employers, schools, and student participation in enrichment and competitions.
Schools can submit applications to become BRONZE, SILVER or GOLD status schools and have to meet set criteria judged at panel to determine award status. There are currently 180 CyberFirst Schools in the UK.
This award is formally recognised by the National Cyber Security Centre and means that SWGS will be provided with further opportunities to engage its Computer Science students with local and national companies and universities seeking to invest time, expertise and resources with our computer science students.
Continued support from DSTL also contributed to this award’s success having financially invested in our computing suites, text books and online revision tools to help support further student exam success at both A Level and at GCSE. DSTL and their apprenticeship team also took time to visit our students with Robot Dogs, an Enigma machine and organised and ran a cross-school Year 10 Challenge day in July that was hosted at SWGS. This year’s Challenge Day is already in the diary. Our students very much enjoyed the loan of Lego Spike kits for our Computing Club to try their hand at programming robots. We truly value DSTL’s support! We look forward to welcoming the DSTL team back on campus in the new year when they will be offering Computing Club sessions from January to March and mentoring support for some of our sixth form students.
We currently have 12 teams signed up for the Year 8 CyberFirst competition taking part in November, and 12 GCSE and A Level student teams taking part in the first round of the Cyber Security Competition next week in association with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology and in collaboration with the University of South Wales, UWE Bristol and Cardiff University.