Last week at our AGM at EGX in Birmingham, our Digital Schoolhouse (DSH) initiative announced its brand new RED sponsorship tier.
Always seeking to realise it’s vision, DSH’s presence at EGX demonstrates just how vital we believe cutting-edge expertise from the games industry is, alongside academic expertise in our classrooms. By introducing the new threshold sponsorship entry of £4500, we present more games businesses with the opportunity to support the delivery of this nationwide initiative.
The UK is leading the way when it comes to shaping how computing should be taught and we are proud to be working with several notable names as part of our programme offering.
Our industry partners, including PlayStation®, SEGA and Warwickshire County Council are critical to our success, because it's games industry support that enriches the work that we do, and increases our impact amongst students. With this support, we can utilise creative resources; tapping into the power of play and engaging students. It also enables us to directly tackle the preconceived stereotypes which surround our sector; empowering female students to achieve alongside their male peers.
Find out what our students think of Digital Schoolhouse and how it's impacted their learning.
As an effective way to increase the talent flow into our industry, we can harness this creativity for careers education too. With our industry partners collective support, we’ve been able to grow from 8 London schools in 2014, to opening 29+ Digital Schoolhouses nationwide this month. We’ve also supported, upskilled and raised the confidence of over 1700 teachers from over 320 schools across the country.
Digital schoolhouse continues to try creative new ideas to engage students; and it's because of this philosophy of experimentation that resulted in us delivering the UK's first ever schools based esports tournament. Over 460 students took part in our pilot, which was supported by Gfinity, PlayStation, 505 Games, NUEL and SEGA. It was a unique approach to careers education. The idea was simple, inspire the students with the possibilities that our industry brings, by immersing them in the world of esports.
Amongst other results, our evaluation concluded that participation in the tournament had: significantly improved student attendance to school, and increased student interest in a career in video games by up-to 75%. The tournament also improved a number of soft skills including team working, communication and perseverance; helped to tackle staff perceptions of the industry and computing as a subject, as well as increasing students interest in studying computing.
That's why working with the industry is so incredibly important to what we do. The video games industry is the hotbed of innovation - it’s the one sector that crosses all diversity categories, supporting one of our core values and the programme’s ethos.
It's industry support that enriches the programme and adds extra value to what we do. Therefore, it was important for us to be able to arrive at an entry price that worked for everyone.
We believe the Red tier enables everyone to support the delivery of this nationwide programme, but without taking on the responsibility of directly sponsoring a school. Becoming a Red Digital Schoolhouse Programme Supporter includes:
- Press and media publicity
- Logo and co-branding across marketing collateral and classroom resources
- Involvement in teacher CPD events
- Opportunity to pilot materials & opportunities with teachers
… and more!
Details about the Red tier and all other sponsorship tiers are fully described in our downloadable brochure here.
Ultimately, we want to harness the power behind this industry: bringing experts together with our classroom expertise, to deliver resources and experiences that not only work for students, but help meet industries needs too.
We cannot grow without your help.