Your CAS Board

When browsing the CAS website while waiting for that next class to descend you might have landed on this page which describes the CAS Board. It’s a bit hidden, but we wanted to draw attention to it and give a shout out to the many people here who give of their time for (as the terms of reference puts it):

• establishing the vision, mission and values for Computing At School, which must be consistent with the BCS Royal Charter
• designing strategy and structure to execute the CAS mission
• supporting staff members implement policy and strategy, whose responsibilities are delegated from the BCS Trustee Board
• monitoring and evaluating the implementation of strategic and operational plans and policies and reporting on implementation to the BCS Academy.

When CAS first started back in 2008/9 and our membership was growing from a handful to many hundreds we consciously divided the members into two groups. The first we called working members, the second supporting members. The idea was that those who joined as working members had a little bit of time to drop into the forum to answer questions, or share a resource for other teachers to use, or run a CAS hub in their area each term etc.. Those who joined as supporting members were keen on what CAS was trying to do and might drop into the forum, or attend local meetings but had little time to contribute anything further. And, that was OK!

Every few months an invitation was issued to the working members to attend a meeting over a couple of days with the explicit intention of getting something done from then until the next meeting. Those attending knew they could leave the meeting with a job or task to get on with before we reconvened. Many quite extraordinary initiatives and projects were kicked off in these meetings that contributed significantly to the wider community and the cause for Computing as a school subject more generally. I (SH) remember fondly the occasion when Roger Davies suggested a CAS Newsletter would be a good idea. There then followed many years, with Roger at the helm, of the publication of “Switched On”. A simply monumental effort which is now carried on by The Raspberry Pi Foundation with the publication of Hello World. Raspberry Pi have been able to take this to a far bigger audience than we would have ever have been able, and we are indebted to them for taking this on so brilliantly. But, it started with a hand in the air back in 2010!

As our partnership and relationship with BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT has grown, deepened and matured and as the influence of CAS has grown we’ve needed better structures and organisation in place for governance. The BCS have brought this to CAS, along with so much more, and whilst formally being referred to as The CAS Board, this group retains much of the spirit of that foundation in the working group.

Over the coming months some of our current board members will be popping in to say “Hi” through a blog. Here we’ll find out about their interests, backgrounds, perhaps even what they find helpful about being a CAS Board member. You can see the first of these from John Palmer, highlighting the brilliant CyberFirst Girls project. John will be well known to many I’m sure: he has been involved with CAS for many years, connecting with teachers in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire (“The Three Counties Hub”), and, more recently, he has been running a NCCE Computing hub with experience and ideals firmly rooted in the secondary classroom.

If you’d like to know more about the work of the CAS Board, or may be interested in “putting your hand up” to get more involved with CAS in this way, do post a comment here or drop me an eMail. We’d love to hear from you.

Simon Peyton Jones (Chair, CAS Board), Simon Humphreys (Vice Chair, CAS Board)