The government has announced the consortium of organisations which will run the new National Centre for Computing Education. The consortium consists of STEM Learning, the British Computing Society and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. They will jointly run the Centre, which will also work with the University of Cambridge. The project will receive £84 million of government investment, as well as £1 million of funding from Google.

The centre, which will not have a physical location but instead operate virtually, will provide training and resources to primary and secondary schools via a national network of up to 40 school-led computing hubs. There will also be an intensive training programme for secondary teachers without a post A-Level qualification in computer science. The funding for the project was originally announced by Philip Hammond in the 2017 budget. The DfE says that the centre will start working with schools across England later this year.

Commenting on the announcement Nick Gibb, the schools standards minister, said ‘The new computer science GCSE has more challenging content such as computer programming and coding. This new National Centre for Computing Education, led by some of the UK’s leading tech experts, will give teachers the subject knowledge and support they need to teach pupils the new computing curriculum.’

Philip Colligan, chief executive of Raspberry Pi commented: ‘This level of investment is unprecedented anywhere in the world for teacher training in the field of computing and computer science. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the way that computing and computer science is taught.’

National Centre for Computing Education website: https://teachcomputing.org