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?

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.

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