Top Award for Data Education in Schools

The Data Education in Schools (DES) team has scooped top prize for Education Initiative of the Year at the 2024 British Data Awards.

DES is part of the Data Skills Gateway, a key strand of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal and its inclusive growth ambition. Since 2018, DES has reached around 40,000 participants, from school-aged children participating in online learner events to returners to the workforce who are learning to code. The DES team has boosted data literacy in more than 850 schools, creating learners fluent in using data to answer big societal questions and teachers who feel confident to teach data skills.

There were 10 finalists in the Education Initiative of the Year category and 321 entries overall. Jo Spiller, Director of Operations and Partnerships, and Jasmeen Kanwal, Project Officer, attended the awards ceremony in London on 8th May (pictured).

Jo Spiller said: “I’m delighted that the Data Education in Schools programme has won this national award in recognition of our work. It is a testament to the hard work, energy, commitment and creativity of the whole team.”

The British Data Awards is an annual event designed to discover and celebrate the UK’s data success stories. This year’s finalists included Admiral Insurance UK, Alliance for Data Science Professionals, Applied Data Science Partners, Corndel, Eden Smith, Education Authority, JLL, Lloyds Banking Group, and Synap.

This is the second year in a row the DES team has won the award. In 2023, Kate Farrell collected the ‘Data for Good Initiative of the Year’ Award on behalf of a UK-wide team, funded by Skills Development Scotland, to develop and test more than 500 new British Sign Language signs covering topics of cyber security, computing science and data science.