About the CIoS Digital Skills Partnership

Our mission is to connect private, public and third sector organisations to create the digital skills ecosystem that Cornwall’s future needs.

The partnership harnesses the innovation in Cornwall to inspire our communities, transform educational landscapes, and create a sustainable digital economy where everyone thrives.

The four areas that the local DSP focuses on are education, communications, digital skills and jobs, and inclusion. This project falls under Education, Digital Skills & Jobs, and Inclusion strands, making it a key part of our workplan for 2022. It’s been partly funded by the Council’s Together For Families service.

About the project

The Digital Skills Partnership has identified that whilst code clubs and similar extra-curricular activities are a fantastic way of inspiring the next generation to get excited about computing and digital making, they are not available to most pupils in Cornwall. This isn’t because schools don’t want to run them, there simply aren’t enough staff with the capacity or correct knowhow

This project aims to give parent volunteers the confidence and skills to run in person Code Clubs for young people, freeing up teachers capacity and empowering them to inspire the tech stars of the future.

Objectives

1. Create new after school code clubs in five primary schools in Cornwall, in areas where we know there are high levels of deprivation and low levels of digital skills, in order to:
   1. Increase levels of primary school leavers who have coding skills
   2. Increase knowledge of the broad range of career opportunities that coding skills can open up
2. Provide opportunities to parents to learn new skills and gain qualifications, especially targeting those furthest from the job market
3. Test whether our approach is scalable to other primary schools in Cornwall by
   1. Assessing the impact on pupils, parents and teachers
   2. Being flexible and trying out new ideas

The brief

We need brilliant project management to co-design, deliver, and evaluate the project with colleagues at Cornwall Council and primary schools.

The project management comprises two parts which can be bid for individually or together.

Part one of the brief includes:

• Working with a design agency to create videos and marketing materials that we can use to engage schools, parents, and pupils
• Deciding on evaluation criteria and develop pre and post project questionnaires or other scoring techniques so we can understand how successful the project was
• Deciding on schools – this will be based on various data including location, deprivation, GCSE and career options

Part two includes:

• Identifying and supporting lead members of staff
• Providing information about the project to teachers and parents including in person information events
• Identifying and supporting volunteer code club leaders
• Supporting the volunteers to set up their clubs
• Liaising with Software Cornwall to deliver the training
• Supporting the school to actively recruit students for the code club, with a focus on encouraging those with no experience of coding, and from groups that are underrepresented in tech.
• Working with CIoS DSP to arrange for people working in the tech sector to come and talk to the cubs about their roles and how they got into it.
• Providing light touch ongoing support whilst encouraging clubs to run independently.
• Submitting a weekly project update and a final report on the project alongside photos for use in future projects and comms.

We anticipate the full Project management role being about 30-40 days work over 3-4 months, and have a top end budget of £6000.

The first part needs to be completed in April. The second part between May and September.

The work could be carried out by one or more people; please outline your delivery ideas in the proposal, and whether you are bidding for part one, part two, or both.

How to submit a proposal

If you are interested, please send a proposal by Friday 1^st April on no more than one side of A4 outlining:

• What elements of the brief you will be working on and the budget you’ll work to
• How you intend to deliver on the brief including brief biographies of people who will be involved
• Examples of previous work
• Why you think teaching digital skills at an early age is important

The proposal will be scored on:

• Value for money
• Alignment to DSP values
• Quality of submission
• Evidence of experience

You will also need to adhere to Cornwall Council’s safeguarding policies and be authorised to work with children and young people.