Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 by Barry Collins
Who’s top of the PC Pro class?
As you may have read from our news story on the appalling state of GCSE IT examinations, five of the PC Pro team has sat the same ICT GCSE Higher paper that thousands of teenagers would have sweated over last summer.
So how did our team of so-called experts do?
Top of the class was deputy editor, David Fearon, who scored a lofty 70 out of 80 – which in this day and age is probably enough to land him a scholarship at Oxford, let alone an A*. David only let himself down on his definitions of testing, extreme data and erroneous data – although given the ridiculously prescriptive marking scheme, we believe it was the answers that were erroneous, rather than David.
Staff writer Matthew Sparkes landed second place, with a creditable 67 out of 80. He fell down on his definition of the term modelling – which caught out a number of our staff – and his model of a central heating system would have incinerated the house’s residents. No Corgi badge for Matt.
News reporter Stuart Turton scored a respectable 64 out of 80. Stuart fell victim to the same tightly-marked definitions as David Fearon. Although we’re going to have him flogged for answering that a database was more likely to be used for financial modelling than a spreadsheet.
It’s a “see me after school” for peripherals editor, David Bayon, who scores a rather worrying 59 out 80. The definitions weren’t his strong point, and his rather literal definition of what is meant by the term e-mail (“electronic mail”, according to Mr B) was not looked upon kindly by the official answer scheme, which specifically ruled out such impertinence.
Meanwhile, it’s back to the bottom of the class for PC Pro’s youngest team member, Mike Jennings, who may have to be shipped back to his local comprehensive after scoring 55 out of 80. In Mike’s defence, when asked to give an advantage of using email over the post, his perfectly plausible response of “saves the trees as less paper is used” wasn’t among the official acceptable answers. Although his assertion that staff “will act totally naturally” when being observed means his appraisal is going to be an interesting exercise this year.
4 Responses to “ Who’s top of the PC Pro class? ”
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Authors
- Barry Collins
- Chris Brennan
- Christine Horton
- Darien Graham-Smith
- Dave Stevenson
- Davey Winder
- David Bayon
- David Fearon
- Ewen Rankin
- Ian Devlin
- Jon Honeyball
- Jonathan Bray
- Kevin Partner
- Mike Jennings
- Nicole Kobie
- Sasha Muller
- Steve Cassidy
- Stewart Mitchell
- Stuart Turton
- Tim Danton
- Tom Arah
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May 29th, 2008 at 11:40 am
From 2000 to 2004 I worked in several secondary schools as a teaching assistant. I saw a number of GCSE IT exam papers and was most unimpressed by the quality of the questions. They gave me the impression the examiners were themselves incompetent in key areas.
For example students had to design a leaflet. They were given a coloured logo – The business name was lost amongst the complicated background due to poor contrast of the chosen font colour Students had to include all the given text. To do this even at a small text size left no room for headings and sub headings large enough to get attention with enough white space to make the page layout attractive and enticing to read.
Just to make sure the end result was terrible, dull and poor quality images were provided for inclusion.
Secondary school teaching of IT beyond the application of Office software is very limited.
I know of students studying A Level computing being taught computer graphics by teachers who had little understanding of the power of using layers in Photoshop, and no knowledge of shaping vector graphics with control points.
Digital graphics, DTP, typography and creative design were just not being taught because there was a huge skills gap in this field amongst the IT and Art teachers. What really stood out, was the fact that the teachers had not bothered to teach themselves, even when suitable software was available on the school network. Any self motivated student would quickly know more than the teachers.
Similarly the application of IT to assist with understanding concepts in other subjects is almost non existent. There is talk of IT across the curriculum, but not much delivery.
School web sites are another disaster area – most of them completely fail W3C standards for HTML, do not even meet WAI Accessibility Level 1, fail CSS, use tables for layout, display poor photographs, and have dull text presentation.
I have taught myself skills in all these areas, but I am not allowed to teach, because I do not have a degree. How crazy is this ?
School IT departments put too much emphasis on hardware investment and under invest in software and finding the time to explore and exploit it.
What all this goes to show is that IT in Education is delivering well below potential.
The Secretary of State for Schools, the Teachers, and the Exam Boards must do better
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:51 am
I myself have just done the 2008 GCSE Full Course IT paper and am sorry to say it was more of the same. except for the last question usually on benefits of some it system which was replaced by ones on the Data Protection Act (DPA 1998). a theme which was running all the way through the paper. the majority of the questions seemed to be about the DPA or other laws and very little of the paper was acutely what i would call IT. still i learned in advance their ridiculous answers and so was able (hopefully) to jump through their hoops.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
The only surprise is that your team were surprised. GCSE examinations are concerned only with identifying the answers that the exam board expect. They build the model answers into their course specifications, rather than considering anything that is concerned with the application of a subject in the real world.
Schools’ current “Hot topic” is “Assessment for Learning” – (Criticise it if you dare!) which should, more correctly, be “Learning for Assessment”. Everything that is done in a classroom must be directed towards improving marks in examinations – and consequently school League Table scores. “Education” is NOT a consideration.
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
“I have taught myself skills in all these areas, but I am not allowed to teach, because I do not have a degree. How crazy is this ?”
No formal qualification, and not allowed to teach, that is just down right mad!
As a self taught surgeon I feel I have lots to offer the medical profession, I am itching to carry out a crayola oblongata.
Or is that just something from the Simpsons?