WISE are excited to be part of a brand-new research project investigating how to engage more girls in computing. We are partnering with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the Behavioural Insights Team, STEM Learning, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, alongside Apps for Good, to work on ‘Gender Balance in Computing’.
Research by the University of Roehampton and the Royal Society recently found that only 20% of computing candidates for GCSE and 10% for A level Computer Science were girls. ‘Gender Balance in Computing’ will develop and roll out multiple projects with the aim of increasing the number of girls choosing to study a computing subjects at GCSE and A Level. These projects will run from 2019-2022 across Key Stages 1-4 – involving over 15,000 students and 550 schools.
As part of this, we are thrilled to be trialling our new outreach resource ‘My Skills My Life’ with Primary schools who get involved with the project. We will be going into 84 schools over the school year 2020/2021 and will be delivering a specific variant of My Skills My Life, focused on computing, to Year 5 students. The consortium has identified some of the possible reasons why a large percentage of girls don’t choose computing, and this includes feeling like they don’t belong, and that computing is not relevant to them. My Skills My Life challenges these stereotypes by showing girls inspirational women working in industry with who they may have traits in common with.
We would like to recruit 300 female role models working within Technology/Computing to register as role models and get involved with sessions across the country between January 2021 and July 2021.
You can get involved by:
- Leading a My Skills My Life session.
- Supporting a My Skills My Life session as a role model.
- Completing a My Skills My Life profile for the online platform/paper resource.
If you’d like to get involved, please register your interest here.
If you would like a school to be involved in the pilot, please direct schools here.
