A school in Lacey Green is encouraging its pupils to develop their programming skills after receiving a boost to its budget.

St John’s School, in Main Road, is using a donation of £6698 from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to train its teachers and buy new equipment.

Richard Crook, from RBS, presented the school with a cheque that will help buy Learnpads, iPad Mini’s and the credit card sized Raspberry Pi computer.

Staff will be trained by Code Club Pro, a not-for-profit organisation, who will help teachers implement the new National Curriculum for computing which was introduced in September.

Gill Grimsey, headteacher at the school, said: “This is a great opportunity to ensure our teachers are on top of the new curriculum and have the necessary equipment to deliver exciting lessons and make writing algorithms fun and educational.”

Mr Crook said: “We’re simply continuing a tradition within the bank to engage with our local communities. We want to help young people, entrepreneurs and local businesses to help themselves by supporting education, enterprise and employability projects.”