From programming robots in factories to creating the software needed to drive vehicles it looks as if technology will play a vital role in the jobs of the future.

With this in mind Nor(Dev):con, the Norfolk Developers group’s conference, reached out to the younger generation by holding a schools day for the first time this year.

The event saw students from across Norwich, including pupils from Norwich School, hear from Microsoft technical evangelist Paul Foster and attempt to build a balancing robot – putting their engineering and coding skills to the test.

Mr Foster said: “It is mainly about inspiring the next generation of technologists.

“We need more technologists, more engineers going forward, so if we can inspire young people to follow a technical education and move forward to a technical career then we will start to have that right workforce there so the UK can achieve more.”

Norwich School are launching a new computer science based curricular for L5 (Year 9), the new 9-1 GCSE Computer Science course and the A Level alongside an extra-curricular coding club next academic year. There has been a lot of demand for this provision and the initial take up has been excellent. Director of IT Alex Jenkins said 'Computational thinking is not a new concept but a new generation of pupils really want to learn about the inner working of devices and the creation of software that surrounds their lives. Hopefully some of these students will be inspired enough to continue on to study at a higher level and begin to fill the skills gap in the UK marketplace of the future.'