A Barrow primary school has hosted a fundraising 'tech day' to help them reach their £2,500 target.

Sacred Heart Catholic Primary and Nursery School is hoping to raise the money to purchase iPads and bridge the gap between children with and without access to devices when learning from home. Some pupils at the school do not yet have access to a device, or have to share a single device between multiple siblings, preventing access to the same learning opportunities that their peers are accessing.

Teacher Mrs Marshall said: “We had a tech day at school to start it off. All of the children brought in their own devices and paid a pound to play on the devices in school.

“We also did a Mario Kart tournament, played with virtual reality headsets and we have programmable Lego robots that we were given in a competition.

“We have a Great British Bake Off competition happening in school tomorrow. Each class has been baking and the class that makes the most money from selling their goods will win a movie afternoon.

“We are going to finish with a dressing-up day to kick-start the Christmas season while also ending the Rocket Fund.”

Two pupils in particular, Archie Smith, five, and Noah Hadwen, nine, have gone above and beyond to help the school.

Archie Smith raised £450 by climbing Gummers How with his dad, and Noah donated £150 of his own pocket money to the cause.

Mrs Marshall said: “The kids have been wonderful and a lot of our parents have. It is an ambitious target for the times that we are in but they have done so well so far so we really hope that we get there.”

Explaining the need for newer iPads at the school, Mrs Marshall said: “We’ve got some iPads in school, including some newer ones which we fundraised for about three years ago but we have still got quite a lot of older devices like the original ones from 12 years ago.

“The kids rely on using them and they are not fit-for-purpose at all. They don’t upgrade to the latest operating systems and you can’t get the correct apps on them.

“Ideally we would replace them but really the big focus for us is to make sure we have devices that we can send home to children for home learning if we have to isolate as a bubble or individually to make sure that they are still able to access the curriculum that their peers are accessing at the same time.

“We found that in lockdown the gap that existed between our children widened massively and what we don’t want to do is allow a 14-day isolation period to widen that gap further.

“Curriculum wise it's really important but to us it’s the mental wellbeing of the kids as well, knowing that they’re not dropping out of the class and they can join in because they have an iPad at home with them will really keep them part of the class.

“We don’t want children who are behind to become further behind because they haven’t got access to a device or the internet.”

To support the cause, you can donate at: https://tinyurl.com/yydnlah3

You can also take a cash donation to the school desk.