Cyber Schools Hub Newsletter May 2019

Clubcrates Concept launched

The project team launched the clubcrate concept this month, which focused on establishing what type of technology is best to support Cyber/Computing clubs in schools. These are being promoted by the NCSC to get more fun teaching hours into students at school, encouraging those in KS3 to select Computer Science at GCSE as an option, or supporting KS4 and KS5 learning in a club environment. The following schools received crates based on their unique individual requirements:

• Newent • Crypt School • Ribston Hall • Dean • Denmark Road

NCSC will be meeting with each of these schools every half term (in addition to Wyedean who were part of an early Pilot club crate concept) to gain an understanding of how the technology and the Cyber/Computing clubs are developing. Multi-School Females inspirational visit to CSW

Wyedean used her connections with the University of South Wales and organised a multi school Cyber Day at the University. Female students who had participated in the Cyberfirst Girls Competition were selected from Wyedean, Ribston, Beaufort and Cleeve Schools, and had a fun and educative time learning about various aspects of Cyber Security, including forensics with interactive activities. The teachers and students were joined by staff from Cyber Security Associates. The NCSC team are keen to promote multi- school activities across the project, given that multiple schools can then benefit from the same organised activity. The computer science teachers from the four schools also used the day to network together, brainstorming ideas for future opportunities CyberUK - Teachers and Companies highlight the value of working together.

NCSC hosted its annual Cyber Security Conference (CyberUK 2019) in Glasgow at the end of April, and the Cyber Schools Hub project was given several slots on the Skills and education track. Cleeve joined staff from Northrop Grumman, while Wyedean paired up with Deep3's Director, Richard Yorke, to provide insights into the huge benefits and opportunities that support from industry is making in the projects schools. Following the presentations both teachers got the opportunity to visit the stands and companies that were highlighting their products with several new opportunities coming from the follow on engagement. Thanks also to Deep3's Will Hoad and Cygenta's Madeline Howard who made a video appearance in the presentations along with students from . Martin, Emma and Richard, were then asked if they would like to do a rerun of their presentations to the staff of NCSC and GCHQ, getting the opportunity to visit GCHQ and see inside the famous 'Donut'. Several companies were also in the audience of the rerun and came forward very quickly asking how they could get engaged with schools within the project. CyberUK 2020 will be held in Newport, Wales, and the NCSC team are looking to develop further opportunities for industry and schools to highlight again the positive benefits of partnering together.

Beaufort Computer Science outreach

Beaufort has been reaching out to several primary schools, including Kings School Gloucester, Abbeymead Primary School, St Gregory the Great School, Linden Primary School and Bishops Cleeve Primary School, running fun and exciting sessions for the KS2 students. These have involved both Beaufort visiting their schools and students from the schools visiting the 'Little Tommies' facility at Beaufort. Beaufort has loads more of these events planned for the summer term, as she concentrates on exposing the students to Computer Science before they go to secondary school, in a concept that is looking to gain their interest early on in their schooling timeline. Cygenta visit Wyedean

FC from Cygenta visited Wyedean School and ran several interesting and thought-provoking sessions for the students. The sessions provided the students with a fantastic insight into his work testing not only his client’s computer networks but also the cultural aspects of how they implement their Cyber Security. Students were enthralled to hear how he breaks into a bank’s security, and how the colour dark blue was more useful than black when trying to blend into the crowd. FC was also interviewed by students as part of the projects new CyberTV YouTube channel. Feedback collated from the students showed that FC's sessions had really caught the attention of the students, with many them looking further into careers in Cyber Security. Can we help you develop an activity?

When the NCSC team visit a company who are keen to support schools with Computer Science we quite often run into the issue that while companies can provide the time for their staff to go into schools, they do not have funding lines that they can tap into to provide equipment to support the activity. While this is not always the case with every company, this is something that potentially stops hundreds of hours of support being provided to schools. Obviously right from the start the CSH project has been providing teachers in the schools with equipment and technology, so the NCSC team are now supporting companies with equipment. This may be to just get their support efforts up and running, or maybe to support the development of activities that teachers have helped work with the companies to develop. Examples of this to date are:

• Lockheed Martin - Equipment provided to help develop activities on logic gates and 3D printing • XQCyber - Equipment provided to help develop activities on defending and hacking racetrack timing and scoreboard systems (XQCyber staff really are having fun with the scalatrex tracks provided) • CGI - Equipment provided to help develop activities based around IOT and sensors. • CSA - Equipment provided to help develop activities based on the roles within a Security Operations Centre CyberDea - A local Cyber Experience

The NCSC team have worked with the project teachers and industry supporters to develop educational visits to both inspire and raise students’ aspirations to follow a career in Cyber Security and Computer Science. These educational visits have ranged from visiting the FUJITSU SOC in Warrington, the Bank of England’s SOC in London, to visits to Bletchley Park. Feedback received from these was always good, but the project teachers informed us that these were very long days for the students and required a lot of paperwork overhead. Thanks to the CyberDea concept, developed by Jamie the Director of CSA, a local location is provided for students to visit outside of school to receive a personalised day of Computer Science and Cyber Security concept learning in a fun environment. This has become a very popular option for schools in the project. Since its launch at the beginning of the year, the projects schools have had 18 days of CyberDea experience, with days focused on defending computer networks, attacking computer networks, building some of the excellent Cyber Pi projects, in addition to hearing about the various

careers and roles a Cyber Security company can offer. Ten of the project schools have visited, some several times, with teachers taking different year groups of students, for different reasons, with all students providing feedback of an exciting and enjoyable experience. Teachers have fed back that the ability to personalise the day for their students has really made a huge difference, with a lot of teachers using the Cyberdea opportunity to help influence the GCSE choices made by students. The NCSC team are keen to support more schools and their students benefitting from the opportunity provided by Cyberdea locally. Restarting Computer Science in a Secondary school

The NCSC team is very pleased to have Dean Academy involved in the project. Dean Academy currently do not offer Computer Science classes or a GCSE choice to its students but are looking via a large range of computing and Cyber clubs to create enough interest from the students, that they will get the demand to provide GCSE Computer Science. Dean Academy is being supported one day a week by Rich, who is based at one of the other schools in the Athalstan Academy Trust, Malmesbury School (although formerly of Churchdown School). The NCSC are working to support in order to document and understand hopefully how this effort to restart Computer Science in a school works successfully. Dean Academy has been one of the most prolific users of the classroom technology dropcrates, and NCSC have now provided a club dropcrate of technology to Dean Academys's specifications. Wyedean is also now providing support to Dean Academy to help them make Computer Science/Cyber Security something that students at the school are keen to pursue. Dean Academy having now firmly established the various clubs and familiarised himself with the technology is keen to engage with industry to help support his efforts. Launch of CyberTV

Students at Wyedean School came up with the idea of creating a CyberTV channel to highlight and document aspects of their experience being involved in the Cyber Schools Hub project. The first video/episode that was created involved Deep3 and Cyber Security Associates staff, in addition to Wyedean and her students, and was shown at CyberUK2019 and within GCHQ/NCSC. Further episodes have been created including interviews of Deloitte staff, FC from Cygenta and CGI staff when they have visited the school for activities and events. These interviews took place in the Philosopher’s Den at Wyedean. have also started producing episodes that will be released soon. The original cameras were borrowed to get this idea off the ground, but the project has now purchased several sets of Go-Pro 4K and 5.2K cameras for students to use to create their episodes. Cyber Drama

The NCSC project has funded a green room and camera equipment for Newent School to help them develop cross-curriculum activities exposing the likes of drama students to Computer Science behind green rooms and the animation capability that they provide. It is also hoped that this green room will be used by the Computer Science students to develop their own episodes for the new CyberTV YouTube channel. Cyber Pi's go IOT

Cyber Security Associates delivered an additional 15 Cyber Pi kits for the project schools to use, in addition to developing 12 new IOT projects, with some great guides and videos provided on the CyberPi website ( https://www.cyberpiprojects.com/). The project is keen to develop a full range of computing and Cyber Security projects on the several raspberry Pi based platforms that are in use by the project. With the IOT projects, students (and teachers) can now build and code everything from cameras connected to the internet to getting Alexa working on the Raspberry Pi.

Ex-student from CGI visits Wyedean

Wyedean students were visited by one of their own. Tiff who now works in Cyber for CGI revisited her old school to help inspire more female students to follow a career in Computing/Cyber Security. Tiff who still has a brother at the school, shared her career story and anecdotes of working in the Cyber career field. Wyedean students then interviewed her for CyberTV, posing some interesting questions for Tiff to answer. The project to date has had two ex-students visit their old schools, both females, and feedback has shown that this type of activity is very inspirational to students as they more easily relate to ex- students who sometimes still know teachers and have gone through a similar schooling experience. New companies come on board

This month we have seen two new companies approach the NCSC team looking to get involved. Sopra Steria (https://www.soprasteria.co.uk/en) got in contact after seeing the combined Cleeve school/Wyedean School/Deep3 CyberUK2019 presentation on how industry can make a difference with schools. Infrastar (http://infrastar.uk/) have also joined the project after hearing about it from a member of GCHQ staff. Both companies are keen to jump in and get involved and have already committed to supporting events coming up in June and July. Women in Cyber (in South Wales)

Wyedean school and other schools to Wales, the NCSC took the Wyedean/Deep3 roadshow to a meeting of 'Women in Cyber' held in Newport. The Women in Cyber cluster is a sub cluster of the South Wales Cyber Cluster. The meetings provide a valuable way for women working, or hoping to work, in the cyber industry to meet and support each other. Wyedean and Richard did a rerun of their presentation from CyberUK 2019 to the meeting and gained considerable interest from them to support the 'inspirational female programme'. This interest is now being followed up to get some of the women present into the projects schools. Women in Cyber (in Deloitte)

Deloitte have their own internal 'Women in Cyber' initiative that they set up to address the gender gap in cyber security. Female members of staff have run sessions in Newent, Wyedean and the UTC Berkeley Green schools, bringing together their own initiative and the CSH projects Inspirational Female Programme. When the staff visited Wyedean they were also interviewed by the students for the CyberTV YouTube Channel. UTC host Girls into Technology Day

UTC Berkeley Green hosted a 'Girls into Technology' Day at the end of May, in attempt to attract more girls into studying both Cyber Security and Engineering at the UTC. Several of the companies who support the project leant a hand, with the likes of CGI, Cyber Security Associates and Deloitte supporting the event. CGI provided an inspirational speaker, panel member and ran an interactive workshop for the girls. Unfortunately, it was lightly attended, possibly due to the timing coinciding with half term, however approximately 15 girls did attend the event and showed interest, and with the average GCSE and A-level class only having 1 or 2 girls within it, this was considered a success. Wyedean offers Cyber BTEC to replace GCSE ICT

Wyedean decided not to offer GCSE ICT this year and last year and to completely replace it with the Level 2 BTEC Tech Award instead (alongside GCSE Computer Science). The award has 40% of its final assessment on Cyber Security, with a total of 23 students selecting it as one of their GCSE options (a 9.5%

increase from last year) , with 26% of the students being female. Wyedean are not alone in replacing normal exam subjects and offering Cyber related exams. Newent have offered a Level 3 Tech IT in Cyber Security since 2017 and UTC Berkeley Green offer the Level 3 Cambridge technical Exam which has 33% Cyber Security in its assessment. Raytheon Junior Cyber event at Kingsholm

Students from Crypt and Beaufort Schools were invited to the Raytheon junior cyber day that was held at Kingsholm. Students from both schools got to undertake activities such as Robotics, Programming LED Cubes, Deciphering computer codes, working with Touring Tumbles and learning how you can eavesdrop on a computer screen using a simple radio tuner, antenna and free software. The event was hosted by 12 staff from Raytheon along with members of the and Manchester police. Cyberfirst Modulisation testing at Wyedean

Wyedean students have been helping test the results of wyedeans's efforts to modulise the Cyberfirst Adventurers course for use as both School Cyber Club activities and to support the Computer Science curriculum. Wyedean has already developed and tested the original 4 modules with year 7 students and is now working on testing the two additional sessions she has now modulised. Beaufort goes into Special Measures

Unfortunately, due to a recent Ofsted Inspection Beaufort Co-operative Academy have gone into Special Measures. One of the consequences of this is that the school has been taken over by the Greenshaws Learning Trust, and a decision has been made by the trust/school not to offer Computer Science to the year 9's who had chosen it as an option, and also to stop delivery of it in KS3. The NCSC team has been informed that schools usually concentrate on the 'Progress 8' subjects when they go into Special Measures, and unfortunately Computer Science is not one of them. The Trust also has and in Gloucestershire, both Secondary Schools that do not offer Computer Science (it is an interesting fact that 50% of schools in the UK do not offer Computer Science, one of the main reasons the project was started). Beaufort Co-operative Academy has now been renamed Holmleigh Park High School. Obviously, this news is a shock to the project in that it loses a Hub school, especially as our efforts to support Sophia and all her energy and enthusiasm, had increased the numbers selecting Computer Science at the school for GCSE by 150%. The NCSC project team are now working with the management of the school to remove the specialised equipment that had been placed in the 'Little Tommies' facility that NCSC along with QA Training and AllCooper Group had built in the school. The facility will return to a basic usable classroom (albeit one with glass walls, an LED sky screen ceiling and close circuit camera security system). Equipment that is being removed will be reallocated to support other concept trials being run with other schools. Sophia has also informed us that because of this change she will be moving schools over the summer, and the project wishes her good luck in her new school (knowing that she will not be a stranger as her new school is still in Gloucestershire). It's not all doom and gloom...

Despite losing Beaufort as one of the projects Cyber Schools Hub and the school no longer offering Computer Science, we have some great stories coming in from some of the other schools involved in the project:

• Crypt School reports that from September they will be doubling the number of computer science teachers at the school (from 1 to 2), as they look to grow the Computer Science Department and enhance their offering of Computer Science (not only to boys but also girls as the school had its first intake of girls this year in Year 7). As always this does however mean another school in Gloucestershire are now looking to recruit a new Computer Science teacher.

• reports that they have 44 students signing up for the new year 10 CS GCSE options (7 of them girls), and have appointed a new Business Studies teacher to free up more of his time to focus on Computer Science, and also that Computer Science will be offered as an A-level with the new school 6th form opening in September this year. Simon got his first GCSE CS cohort to exams this year after starting interest in Computer Science by using 2 Computing clubs, one based around Lego Mindstorm and other robotics, and the other based around games design. • Denmark Road School reports that unfortunately the school have decided not to offer A-level Computer Science from September onwards, with Teresa now on a mission to encourage more of her GCSE Computer Science students to stay on at Denmark Road 6th Form and request A-Level Computer Science. • Cleeve School reports that he has had a 15% increase in students selecting GCSE Computer Science this year (with an increase from 23% to 26% of the number of girls selecting Computer Science), while at A-level he has had a 70% increase in the number of students selecting Computer Science, with an increase in girls from 20% to 41% of the class size this year. • Ribston Girls Grammar School reports that approximately 15% of the students in each year group (Y10 and Y11) take Computer Science GCSE. • Wyedean School reports that 31.5% of her students selecting GCSE Computer Science this year were girls, up from 26% last year, with an overall increase of 52% in the number of students selecting GCSE Computer Science this year. For A-level, Wyedean are capping the number of students to 35 who can select Computer Science this year due to capacity, last year they had a whopping 36 students studying Computer Science. This year 46% of the whole year group selected Computer Science as a GCSE Subject, including 29% of all the females in the year group (compared to 62% of the boys in the year group selecting Computer Science). • Newent School reports that they have seen a slight increase in numbers selecting GCSE Computer Science as an option but have had an increase from 19% to 24% in the number of girls signing up. At A-level they have had a 300% increase with 33% of them girls and on their L3 Cyber Security course an increase of 100%, with 66% of them being girls. Some interesting statistics

The NCSC team commissioned some work by HESA, the experts in Higher Education Data and Analysis, who are based in Cheltenham to look at the pathway’s students take into university. One of the interesting statistics that came out of this data was the percentage of A-level Computer Science students compared with size of 6th Form at the end of KS5. This statistic provides an indication of which 6th forms are producing the highest percentage of Computer Scientists compared to their overall 6th form size. The following schools had the highest percentages:

• Wyedean School - 18.3% • Marling Grammar School- 12.4% • Cleeve School - 6.2% • St Peter's High School - 6.1% • Denmark Road School - 5%

With the remaining 6th forms in the county having less than 5% of their 6th forms students studying Computer Science at the end of year 13. It is noteworthy that Cirencester College, which is 7 times the size of Wyedean School, had the most students doing CS at the end of year 13 with 22, which only equated to 2.9% of its students. Ohbot train the Teachers

Dan from Ohbot has run two sessions recently for us, one at Beaufort and one at Gloucester University, looking to train both secondary school and primary school teachers on how to get the best from the Ohbot programmable robotic heads. These sessions were well received by the teachers and the projects ohbot dropcrates continue to be very popular with both secondary and primary schools involved in the project, with the project purchasing additional dropcrate to help meet the considerable demand for them.

Cyberhub.uk Teaching materials on the increase

A key concept trial of the project is to develop teaching materials that may or may not utilise the technology dropcrates that are then made available for other teachers to utilise on the Cyberhub.uk website. The project teachers have been very busy not only developing specific one session material but also full schemes of work. Here are some of the more recent material that has been produced:

• Web Basics, Fake News & Plagiarism • GCSE CS Knowledge Organisers • Flowol • Appshed App Developer • Extended Micro:bits • Morse Code in Python • @Game Zip64 • Phishing School (based on original material provided by the Bank of England) New Technology Dropcrates released

NCSC having listened to the project’s teachers have developed several new technology dropcrates this month:

• 2 X Dropcrates of 15 iPads • 2 X Dropcrates of 15 Sphero Bolts • 6 X Dropcrates of 10 GameZip64s (Micro:bit based) • 1 X Dropcrate of 18 BlueBots • 1 X Dropcrate of 18 ProBots • 1 X Dropcrate of 15 Red Ohbots • 2 X Dropcrates of 15 Blue Ohbots • 2 X Dropcrates of 7 Turing Tumbles • 2 X Dropcrates of 30 Headphones