PG Online, a small, family publisher were announced as BETT Award finalists for the development of their outstanding downloadable teaching materials and printed textbooks to support the growth of Computer Science in the UK and abroad.
The BETT Show enabled the PG Online team to meet face to face with teachers and have the time to discuss changes in the curriculum and working with their teaching materials. The opportunity to ‘meet with the authors’ was hugely successful, informative and rewarding for all.
PG Online believe that KS3 is about finding enjoyment in the subject, and their units are designed to be fun, both to teach and to learn from, with the aim of inspiring more students to choose Computer Science as a GCSE option and discover more about the subject. Schools using the KS3 units are already reporting significant increases in GCSE numbers; in part, they believe, owing to the quality and content of these units.
With the forthcoming changes in the GCSE specifications for September 2016, PG Online are planning a new series of units to support these too.
The PG resources have had a massive impact on achievement on our GCSE Computing course – Alex Salmeron, Head of Computing, Rushcliffe School
After completing a very popular series of 20 KS3 units and two series for AQA and OCR GCSE Computing in 2014, a further series of teaching units to support A Level Computer Science has been released with supporting textbooks. Material for the Cambridge IGCSE has also recently been launched to support teachers in independent schools and a rapidly growing international market.
A key feature of all the PG Online resources is that there is no annual subscription; once a school has purchased a downloadable unit, it can be saved on the school network and it is theirs for life. A further advantage is that units can be purchased individually to fill gaps in the school’s own resources without the need to buy the entire series.
A generation ahead of everything else. Perfect resources to give to non-specialists to deliver lessons with authority – Don Jones, Director of Teaching and Learning, Fallibroome Academy
Each series of units ensures complete coverage of the syllabus or specification which gives complete confidence to the teacher and the students, knowing that they are delivering or receiving the full breadth of knowledge required for an examination, or at KS3, sound preparation for a GCSE in the subject.
Rob Heathcote, Director of PG Online says that “40 to 60 hours of work goes into each one of the PG Online lessons, including the research, lesson plan, PowerPoint slides, worksheet and homework, and there is not a teacher in the country who can afford to spend that amount of time on planning one lesson.” Thousands more teachers will attest to that fact.
PG online material for KS3 have been instrumental in helping me transit from ICT to Computing. Cutting down work load in planning SOW and resources. All materials have been adapted to suit our school with ease and the pupils are really enjoying the programming elements – Mark Fegan, Head of Computing, Sacred Heart School
For more information contact Rob Heathcote, Director, or visit www.pgonline.co.uk
