• Urban Academy 383 pupils (oversubscribed) in Doncaster
• Ofsted rating: Good
• FSM: 22.3%

Review rating:

Average rating across all Purple Mash reviews: 4.2/5

A good ks1 programme to engage children

How well does it match the curriculum?

Reasonably: It’s good enough for the money, but needs some additional resources

Great for early intro to computing as I feel it gives the children opportunities to access other areas of the curriculum whilst using a computer

How well does it support adaptation for different groups of pupils?

Reasonably: Essentially there’s enough for most pupils but there isn’t enough support / extension or challenge. Once you get into the programme it seems to differ well but needs some areas improving

An overview document for each area so you can easily find what you want the children to access and this would also help address the differentiation issues too.

How well does it engage and motivate pupils?

Well: Pupils generally enjoy using it and tend to welcome doing so

They enjoy the aspect of accessing a computer to learning different areas and also the colours and set up really appeals to KS1 children

How well supported is it by any included formative assessments?

Badly: There isn’t any / enough formative assessment or what there is, isn’t very useful

We haven’t found a good way of accessing any formal assessment in the programme just a basic run down

How well does it support planning?

Reasonably: Mostly we can use it without an unreasonable amount of effort or additional resource requirement

Again if there was a clear planning overview for each section this would really help in planning but what it has is adequate

How well does it support home use / independent learning?

Brilliantly: We’d have very few reservations about using this extensively to support home learning

All our children love accessing this at home

How would you rate it for value for money compared to similar resources?

Well: It’s worth the money and effort to introduce – more so than many similar resources I’ve seen

A planning overview and better formal assessments would make this even better value for money as it would then cover all areas of need in our school

Would you recommend it to a colleague in a similar school to yours? 8/11

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