Welcome to our blog

It’s probably fair to say that in the world of primary programming, Scratch rules – or its way up there at the very least! And why wouldn’t it be? It’s free, it’s a visual coding language, which is great for beginners, but equally you can do some powerful things with it. However, when I saw a new Switched on Computing Year 6 programming unit, involving learning some Python (a text-based coding language), I was excited to get stuck in. 

The first two resources ever published by Rising Stars were two revision guides: Achieve Level 5 English and Achieve Level 5 Maths, edited in the spare bedroom of my house in Bromley and published with much trepidation in 2002. I can hardly believe that was fourteen years ago! I’m fortunate enough to have brilliant colleagues and they have spent the last year or so developing the latest generation of Achieve resources – Achieve Online Mathematics which will launch in July 2016.