Council rolls out iPads for pupils at Craigroyston

This week all the pupils at Craigroyston Community High School are being given their personal iPads as part of the council’s £17 million iPad roll out for all high school pupils and P6-7 pupils.

Some pupils we spoke at the school on Tuesday morning to were excited about the way this will help them to learn by offering access to online information. They were attending a session for the devices to be handed over and then pupils were led through the process of setting them up.

Headteacher Shelley McLaren said:” Pupils know this is going to transform their learning. We have worked really hard up to this point for them to receive their iPads. As you have seen today they are very excited about preparing for what’s to come in terms of their lessons. To be honest these young people already know how to use the iPad probably better than I do.”

She admitted that teaching will be quite different. She continued: “We have prepared for this and have had a lot of sessions about what teaching is now going to look like, because we are taking away jotters and not replacing it with an iPad but really teaching in a very different way.”

Council Leader Cammy Day said there is a £17.5 million investment across the city. He said: “This is an immense amount of money to make sure that we can allow the next generation of teaching to be done as best we can for digital needs.”

The infrastructure at all schools has been upgraded by CGI the council’s tech partner. Cllr Day continued: “We learned during the last rollout that not having great wifi is obviously an issue so the infrastructure has been put in first, and today we are seeing around 50 pupils getting their iPads with another 50 due to receive theirs tomorrow. By Friday everyone in the school will have an iPad. I think this is an exciting time for Craigroyston Community High School and an exciting time for the city.”

This is part of the council’s plan to buy and hand out 39,000 iPads to every school pupil from P6 to S6 and members of teaching staff in Edinburgh. This is part of the education strategy Edinburgh Learns for Life. The rollout began last year and by the end of this year the 39,000 devices with plugs and cables will be handed over.

Benefits for young people include:

• Fair and equal access from P6 to S6, ensuring all pupils have personal access to digital learning with their teacher in school or at home
• Effective digital workflow to increase engagement, improve teacher feedback and raise attainment
• A range of innovative accessibility features to improve access to the curriculum for pupils with additional support needs
• Pupils can work online simultaneously in a class or collaboratively outside the classroom
• High quality digital applications for productivity and creativity, providing more ways to personalise and choose how they learn
• Development of learning, thinking and digital literacy skills vital for success in today’s rapidly evolving, technological society

 The roll-out meets an element of one of the 15 outcomes and actions from the previous administration’s three year business plan ‘Our Future Council, Our Future City’: ‘increasing attainment for all and reducing the poverty-related attainment gap’. The business plan was approved by then councillors during their budget meeting on 18 February 2021 when they also agreed £8 million funding for additional digital devices.