Government publishes TechFirst guide for UK secondary schools
The guidance lists free computing resources and two November challenges for pupils. Teachers must register pupils for the TechFirst Girls Competition by 10 November.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport published guidance on 19 October 2026 setting out what TechFirst offers UK secondary schools.
TechFirst is the government's tech skills programme. The guidance says it is "giving 1 million young people the chance to build their skills, get confident with AI and explore future careers in tech." Schools and colleges take part by contacting a regional delivery partner and can apply to become a Bronze, Silver or Gold TechFirst School. The main TechFirst page already had a schools section, last changed on 30 September.
The main online resource is Ada Computer Science, a free platform with coding projects and revision content for students aged 11 to 19. TechFirst supports it through a partnership with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The guidance says new resources for pupils aged 11 to 14 are being written.
Teachers must register pupils for the TechFirst Girls Competition, run by IBM for girls aged 12 to 13, by 10 November. The competition runs from 11 to 20 November. It replaces the CyberFirst Girls Competition, which ran from 2016 to 2025. New challenges cover AI and quantum computing.
The UK Bebras Challenge runs from 9 to 20 November for pupils aged 6 to 19. It tests computational thinking, which means breaking a problem into steps a computer could follow. Both challenges are free and need no coding experience. The guidance does not say how many schools have joined TechFirst so far.
Sources
- Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (GOV.UK) TechFirst for schools
- Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (GOV.UK) TechFirst
- Raspberry Pi Foundation UK Bebras Challenge