Digital Schools Awards Scotland Introduction to All Awards.

Let’s start with why. Digital skills open doors for our young people. Scotland’s tech sector creates around fifteen thousand six hundred job opportunities every year, and it’s worth around six point eight seven billion pounds, with around a hundred thousand digital tech jobs. Yet the number of computing science teachers has fallen, from seven hundred and sixty-six in 2008 to five hundred and fifty in 2025, and only twenty-three per cent of National 5 Computing Science entries are from girls: fewer than one in four.

The Digital Schools Award is a national programme that recognises, rewards and promotes a whole-school approach to digital learning and teaching. It’s free for every school, independently validated and nationally recognised. At its heart is a self-evaluation framework that helps you reflect on where you are, and plan where you want to go next.

Behind the award is a partnership between government, education agencies and industry, led by HP. Government and education set the vision and strategy, with a roadmap for school improvement and the goal of developing next-generation learners. Industry brings long-term strategic investment, supports the national digital strategy, and helps build communities and shared learning between schools. Together, they make it a sustainable model, pedagogically based and built to last.