NCFE learner is Finalist for BAFTA Young Game Designers Award

16 Jul 2019

A student at St John’s Catholic Comprehensive School, Pavanjot Town, was honoured in this year’s BAFTA awards in the Young Game Designers category after gaining skills in NCFE Interactive Media qualification.

Pavanjot is studying the Level 2 Technical Award in Interactive Media. The flexible nature of this qualification means that the content can be adapted to suit the school and learners’ preferences and available equipment. St. John’s chose to focus on game making, rather than choosing a more traditional interactive media product, such as website design. Learners were required to investigate computer games, plan and prepare for creation of a game, as well as developing, producing, presenting and promoting their own computer game.

The BAFTA Young Game Designers initiative inspires and supports young people to create, develop and present their new game idea to the world. Almost 40 learners from the school submitted extremely impressive entries for the Game Making Award and Pavanjot was one of the lucky finalists who stood out against fierce competition.

‘Spooky Da Ghost’, the Pavanjot’s impressive game, was created on the Clickteam Fusion platform, which is the game making software used to create many popular computer games. A classic platform game, the character Spooky has to dodge objects and other characters, collecting coin to proceed to the next level.

“The qualification is enjoyable, fun and challenging.”

Pavanjot commented: “Entering the BAFTA Young Game Designers Awards was made possible by studying the Level 2 Technical Award in Interactive Media. The qualification is enjoyable, fun and challenging. I’ve developed skills in coding and animation, with the use of Clickteam Fusion and Piskel software. There’s always something new involved in this qualification and I have really enjoyed developing my skills and knowledge in this subject.”

Chris Mooney, Head of Computer Science at St John’s Catholic Comprehensive School, said: “We are delighted to see our Interactive Media learners developing the skills they needed to in order to submit entries for these prestigious awards. Learners have been able to use their creativity skills and gain useful technical skills that can be used for future learning and when entering the workforce.

“We chose to deliver the NCFE qualification as it offers learners the opportunity to use interactive media software, developing independent and creative skills, and delivery staff can tailor the qualification to the learners’ needs and interests. Using tutorials, online resources and teacher delivery, the learners were engaged with the content at all time and were excited for each lesson.”

Chris continued: “Attending a NCFE training event helped solidify and consolidate what delivery staff were teaching and helped assure us that we were able to experiment with the methods of teaching, as long as it hit the assessment objectives.

“We would highly recommend NCFE, the support and guidance offered is exceptional and we loved being able to design our own course specifically for our learners.”

Interactive Media learners at St John’s Catholic Comprehensive School are following their aspirations to continue learning or enter the workplace after completion of this qualification. Chris commented: “One of our learners, Jamal, is progressing to a technical apprenticeship in the IT industry, which is a fantastic achievement. Many learners will be continuing with level 3 studies from broader IT aspects or staying at our school for sixth form study.”

To find out more about this qualification, please visit QualHub.co.uk.