St. John Fisher Catholic High School Harrogate was founded in 1958 on a site that was the area education office within the old Harrogate High School campus. The school buildings were first built in 1903 to hold a Catholic convent school, hence why they why they have a beautiful chapel and a school with real character. There is a great deal of history to the school.
More recently the school has been Graded “Good” in its most recent OFSTED Report and is regularly one of the top non-selective comprehensive schools in the GCSE league tables in Yorkshire.
Recently the school embarked on a journey to enhance student’s digital skills through the delivery of Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) starting with a MOS ‘TestFest’ in June. During the TestFest month over 82 successful certification exams were taken by students and staff in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Head of IT and Computer Science, Mark Ward said; ‘As a school, our number one priority is to prepare our students for further education and employment. As digital skills are one of the most in demand skills we wanted to give our students the opportunity to be certified by Microsoft, in the Office skills they use in school.
We partnered with Prodigy Learning who supply us with MOS exams to run a successful TestFest month in June. Results from students have been exceptional with some students scoring way above the 70% required pass rate and some even successfully taking the challenging MOS Expert higher level qualification.
The TestFest month has been a less pressured way to introduce our students to MOS certification in preparation for a more structured approach next year. Feedback from students and parents has been very encouraging with many parents commenting how delighted they are that their children are being offered such a valuable additional qualification’.
Jamie Edmondson, Year 10 student added: ‘Having the opportunity to take the MOS exams was amazing. The exams were the perfect length to fit into a lesson, and I used skills in Microsoft office that I had picked up over my years in school. The MOS exams will certainly help me stand out amongst other candidates for Jobs in the future. It was a great opportunity for me and I would highly recommend taking the exam if you have the chance.’
Andrew Lenehan, Account Manager at Prodigy Learning also commented: It has been a pleasure to work with Mark and the team at St John Fisher and seeing so many students pass MOS certification so quickly has been a delight.
I had the opportunity to meet some of the successful students on a recent visit to the school their enthusiasm was fantastic. Hearing from students who have passed Associate level planning to take Expert level exams is fantastic. I’m looking forward to seeing those students succeed with MOS Expert.
The value the school is offering to students with MOS is fantastic, statistics show that candidates with a vendor micro credential are 2.5 times more likely to get shortlisted for interview than those without and for those students heading to university, having the knowledge to produce in depth work using Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be of huge benefit. Having worked with Mark now for some time, it’s fantastic to see so much effort going into providing students with the very best start in life’.
Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certification is the world’s most recognised computing qualification. Proving a person’s skills and abilities in Microsoft’s Office applications. MOS training and certification is recognised by industry and demanded by employers worldwide. MOS certification gives individuals the ability to achieve professional success in diverse professional environments, including business and finance, healthcare, computer science and IT, engineering, and more. Find out more at Prodigy Learning – Microsoft.
