Sarah Zaman and Dave Ames from the School of Computer Science, recently attending a reception at St James’s Palace hosted by Prince Andrew, HRH The Duke of York, to celebrate the success of computing education in schools.

His Royal Highness is Patron of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Foundation has recently announced that the Raspberry Pi has become the best selling British-made computer ever. The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer, designed specifically for educational purposes. It is ideal for schools, enabling them to introduce children to many of the key concepts in computing, and to build devices incorporating the computing power of the Raspberry Pi.

The School of Computer Science is widely recognised as delivering a highly successful computing outreach to schools, with three members of staff employed exclusively to support schools and school teachers. The outreach programme is funded by the Department for Education, and currently supports over 2,200 schools, both Primary and Secondary, with a host of activities aimed at introducing exciting computing in schools and supporting teachers in its delivery. It is a heady time for computing education, with schools requiring considerable support and many new ways of delivering computing, including small credit-card-sized computers such as the Raspberry Pi.

The royal invitation recognises Sarah and Dave’s instrumental role in using the Raspberry Pi to deliver programming and other aspects of computing to teachers and schools. After the reception, Sarah said: “Prince Andrew’s commitment to computer science was impressive. His speech showed both his commitment and his knowledge of what is happening in computing education.”