How it Works

Step 1: Registration

Register to create your school profile for the Digital Schools Awards Programme. Your school profile contains relevant contact details and stores your self-evaluation information and documentation.

Your profile is private and protected by secure password.

This step takes approximately 5 minutes to complete.

Step 2: Self-Evaluation

Each school must fully complete a self-evaluation in order to apply for accreditation. During this stage, schools are evaluating their performance against five digital schools criteria and are preparing to meet the necessary requirements for validation such as Acceptable Usage Policy, Digital Technology Plan, the school website and a short statement outlining their recent achievements and highlighting effective use of any tools, practices or initiatives which the school feels deserve recognition.

Don’t worry, your self-evaluation responses are retained so you may return at any stage to review, update or change your self-evaluation form.

Finally, when you are satisfied that you meet the programme criteria and have successfully completed the self-evaluation, you can upload the supporting documentation to your profile and request a programme validator to visit your school.

This can be done in stages.

Step 3: Validation

After successfully completing the self-evaluation you will be prompted to request a validation visit at the end of the process. Programme validators are approved by Education Scotland and C2k in Northern Ireland. The role of the validator is to meet the Principal, visit the classrooms and assess the self-evaluation submission. The validator will submit a School Validation Report to the Digital Schools Awards committee for review and adjudication.

Schools that successfully achieve the criteria will be recognised and awarded Digital School status. New Digital Schools will receive ongoing practical support and resources as part of the community of digital schools in the UK and Europe

Schools that do not meet the required criteria will receive feedback, guidance and support in order to reapply for validation.

A school visit will take approximately 1 hour.

FAQ

From initial application to final conferment of award can last anywhere from several weeks to several months depending on the readiness of the school to complete the process, including gathering evidence against each statement.  In some cases, applicants will have all the evidence needed and therefore complete the process quickly. In other cases, applicants may wish to use the criteria as a ‘road map’ to guide further innovation needed to support their application.

Depending on your situation and learners, these could include a range of file types such as screenshots, links to online resources or content, training certificates, emails, images, audio/video files, recordings etc.  Make sure each piece of evidence is supported by an explanatory statement providing some contextual information.  For example, you could reflect on what ‘s gone well, how would you do things differently next time, whether what you did has made a difference to colleagues / learners, etc. What is the impact and is it measurable or evidenced?

While it is difficult to quantify the amount of evidence needed, you should think more about how well the evidence represents the statements in each section. Evidence should also be selected carefully to represent your best practice. The following information may help you select the best evidence for your application.

  1. Avoid ‘pouring’ all your work into the submission for each statement;
  2. Select the best evidence for each statement;
  3. Make sure the range of evidence you submit reflects the full range of work you are involved in;
  4. Where appropriate, provide a short explanation to the reviewer so that he/she knows the context in which the work is undertaken;
  5. Try to show variety in your submission, using different forms of evidence where appropriate;
  6. Make sure you conform to data protection and safeguarding requirements for your organisation.

Yes.  We encourage applicants to link their submission to their organisation’s strategic priorities as it is the best way of ensuring that the work they do is sustainable.