Apple Distinguished School

2015 – 2017. 2017 – 2020. 2021 – 2024. 2024 - 2027.

We have been recognised as an Apple Distinguished School since 2015, with our most recent application being successful for the period 2024 - 2027. We are very proud to work amongst other innovative educators and schools within the Apple community. We, like them, use Apple technology to connect pupils to the world, fuel creativity, deepen collaboration and make learning personal. For us, it is also an important part of how we ensure equality of provision for all, putting all of our learners first. Now more than ever, we must harness the power of technology to give our children the best possible chance of success.

The selection of Prescot Primary as an Apple Distinguished School highlights our success in creating an innovative and compelling learning environment that engages pupils and allows all children to access our rich curriculum.

We currently provide all of our children from Y2 with a 1:1 iPad that they keep as their own until Y6 - 24/7. This allows our children to easily access their personalised classrooms at school and at home and develops a love of learning by encouraging ownership and independence.

VISION

Our vision is built upon four pillars of shared understanding. We aim to develop:

Lifelong readers - Learning to read and reading to learn is central to our vision. We aim to build reading confidence and fluency through high quality teaching and a wide selection of real and digital texts. It is our mission to put books into the hands and homes of our children.
Articulate communicators - Oracy is a life skill and holds the key to success for many other curriculum areas. Speaking and listening skills are embedded at every level and technology offers authentic talking opportunities with real purpose.
Responsive teachers and learners - Purposeful, swift feedback is valued as an intrinsic part of the teaching/learning cycle. Our teaching teams are connected with our pupils in a respectful way, with a shared responsibility for progress.
A technology-rich environment - Our environment creates possibilities for transformational learning.

LEARNING

Our trust in technology as another teacher in the room has encouraged us to invest in educational platforms that are changing the way that our children learn to read, spell and improve their maths fluency. The success of these platforms rests on the fact that our children have their own Apple device. Our children access high quality, adaptive resources at the touch of a button, whether at home or in school. In addition to providing engaging, personalised learning opportunities, we have seen a significant impact on teacher workload. Teachers value time. A technology-rich learning environment rewards teachers with time and they reinvest it into our pupils.

Alongside their personal profiles, children are encouraged to record, collaborate, create and problem-solve with their iPads. However, apps such as Clips have changed the way the children can record their learning, create tutorials for each other or make short movies.

One of our school improvement areas is oracy and we can see how technology - even though not obvious at first - really does promote the speaking and listening skills of our pupils. As part of an ongoing oracy project, we have seen how children talk more freely into an iPad, shedding their inhibitions and anxieties around speaking aloud. Recent successes include books read aloud with expression by some of our less confident readers. Outcomes for all aspects of English have improved.

As a result of our robust vision and confidence in the Apple eco-system, the effectiveness of our KS2 provision has been long-standing. Based on the successes in KS2, we have recently launched our 1:1 provision in KS1. Our younger learners are now ready to start their Apple journeys. Children in Y1 have used their iPads to record news reports to share with other classes.

Apple technology is powering their growing independence.

SUCCESS

When our pupils reflect on their iPad as a learning tool, they all agree that it would be much more difficult to learn without it. They recognise that they engage quicker, address misconceptions more easily, create and collaborate more successfully and share instantly. We know that a 1:1 iPad builds learning confidence.

The success of our iPads is reflected in the readiness of our children to:

Talk articulately and express themselves with confidence.
Own their reading progress, strive to improve and love the books they read
Assess their own progress and respond to feedback with an acute awareness of what they need to do next in order to improve.
View the world in a creative way.

WHAT NEXT?

Over the coming three years, we intend to:

Build on the success of our iPad provision in KS2 and develop a purposeful, robust strategy for KS1.
Design and create an exciting media studio which the older children can lead. This will give children authentic reasons to talk, present, recite, campaign and express in a collaborative way.
Commit to high quality, relevant CPD for all staff and trainees, strengthening our collective expertise.
Continue to grow by exploring recognised research projects to further impact success.

You can find our application story to download at the bottom of this page.

Here are some other videos that demonstrate how we use our Apple technology:

https://vimeo.com/325211906/2f5b29c9ff - Whole Class Feedback
https://vimeo.com/325209044/1b90260852 - Using Kahoot
https://vimeo.com/325210685/75d143aad4 - Using Plickers

Download our iBooks from the iBooks Store. Follow these links:

Watch our new video which explains how our long-standing trust in Apple technology significantly impacts all aspects of teaching and learning:

Apple Technology at Prescot Primary. June 2024:

https://youtu.be/8Exv3J43ynY

Prescot Primary's partnership with MCC Digital:

https://www.mccdigital.com/case-studies/prescot-primary