What is the Digital Schools Award?
The Digital Schools Awards is a national award scheme to promote, recognise and encourage a whole school approach to the use of digital technology in schools.
There are 3 steps to the process of achieving the award:
- Step 1 – Registration
- Step 2 – Self Evaluation
- Step 3 – Validation
What is needed at each step to achieve this award.
Step 1 – Registration
Register to create Newcastle Primary School’s profile for the Digital Schools Awards Programme. Our school profile contains relevant contact details and stores our self-evaluation information and documentation.
Step 2 – Self Evaluation
Our school must fully complete a self-evaluation in order to apply for accreditation. During this stage, we are evaluating their performance against five digital schools criteria and are preparing to meet the necessary requirements for validation such as Acceptable Usage Policy, Digital Technology Plan, the school website and a short statement outlining our recent achievements and highlighting effective use of any tools, practices or initiatives which the school feels deserve recognition.
Step 3 – Validation
After successfully completing the self-evaluation we request a validation visit at the end of the process. Programme validators are approved by Education Scotland and C2k in Northern Ireland. The role of the validator is to meet the Head Teacher, visit the classrooms and assess the self-evaluation submission. The validator will submit a School Validation Report to the Digital Schools Awards committee for review and adjudication.
Schools that successfully achieve the criteria will be recognised and awarded Digital School status. New Digital Schools will receive ongoing practical support and resources as part of the community of digital schools in the UK and Europe.
Where are Newcastle Primary School on their journey to achieving this award?
Our school registered to achieve this award in August 2025. We are currently working on Step 2. We have come a long way since we registered to achieve this award.
We have been collaborating with a fife school who have already been through the awards process and have recently received this award. We have also been collaborating with Newcastle Early Learning Nursery, who are also working towards the award, which will provide consistency throughout Nursery and into Newcastle Primary School with regards to the use of digital technology in the pupils learning.
We are gathering evidence of the use of digital technology around the school. Teachers received iPads in August 2025 and our P6/7 pupils received their iPads on 31st October. Since then both Teachers and pupils have received training on how to use their iPads effectively for teaching and learning in the classrooms. Recently the P6/7 parents also experienced this during a Family Learning session in the classroom.
Other ways our school uses digital technology includes our website, School Facebook page, emails, and group call to keep our parents and local community up to date with what is being achieved in the school. We have a small team of digital leaders who work hard with teachers and pupils to assist with access to learning through using technology.
We will continue to gather evidence showing how digital technology is used within our school, including teaching our pupils the importance of internet safety, this will allow us to move to the final step of validation.
Our digital learning journey to date is displayed in the school.
