CyberFirst School Silver Award

CLASS OF THEIR OWN: FOURTEEN SCHOOLS RECOGNISED BY CYBER EXPERTS FOR FIRST-RATE TEACHING

· St Patrick’s College are delighted to have been one of Fourteen UK schools and colleges recognised for excellent cyber security teaching by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

At Patrick’s College have shown they are in a class of their own by becoming one of the first in Northern Ireland to receive recognition for their first-rate cyber security teaching offer. They have been awarded the Silver award in recognition of excellence in cyber security education, as part of the CyberFirst Schools initiative run by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – a part of GCHQ, including one at Gold standard. The CyberFirst Schools programme recognises secondary schools and further education colleges that can demonstrate their passion for inspiring the next generation of cyber security experts and addressing the UK’s cyber skills gap.

The successful schools across the UK demonstrated a range of work aimed at engaging pupils, including offering lunchtime coding clubs, sessions where pupils could pitc

h Internet of Things concepts, and running projects linking computing to medical sciences.

The successful institutions in Northern Ireland are joined by nine others around the UK that were recognised in this round of applications. And now more cyber-savvy schools are being encouraged to apply, as the latest call for recognition opened today (Monday 15 February).