PUPILS at a York school are celebrating the arrival of 12 new laptops thanks to the fundraising efforts of a much-loved city community group.

Danesgate Community School in Fulford received a £2,000 donation from Minster Lions to buy 12 Chromebooks to help support students with their home learning, online lessons and for those pupils still attending the school throughout the third national coronavirus lockdown.

Ian Pybus from Minster Lions said: “Christmas looked as if we would not be able to get out with Rocking Rudolph due to the Covid restrictions but a small team were able to overcome these and went out for three weekends to Monks Cross shopping centre and Vangarde who we thank for making us welcome.

“As there were no tourists all the money we were able to collect was from the residents of York and we thank them for their generosity. We went on to donate the £2,000 raised to Danesgate School to purchase 12 Chrome Books for the pupils to help the students during and beyond lockdown.”

Danesgate Community is a large special school of around 220 pupils aged five to 16, many with complex social, emotional and education needs and because of this, most of the pupils have continued to attend school during lockdown.

Deputy head, Chris Nichols, said: “The new laptops have been essential in supporting our students learning and allowing valuable communication between staff and students throughout this lockdown.

“They will be a hugely valuable resource to the school as students have now moved back into their normal classes and groups.

“Danesgate has also recently invested substantially into its network and IT systems and many of our staff now run lessons through a cloud based storage…having laptops available for small group tuition will modernise the way we teach; personalising it more for each student and allow lessons to be more interactive.

“We are incredibly grateful for all the work and efforts of the Minster Lions members.

“The laptops will have a positive impact on the students learning and progress while we manage through this global pandemic and then beyond.”