Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on June 8th, 2009 by Barry Collins
ICT curriculum last updated in… 1999
Things move incredibly quickly in technology. Back in the March 1999 issue of PC Pro, for example, our news section was bemoaning the fact NT4 was as “secure as a piece of Swiss cheese” and marvelling at the prospect of some blue-sky BT technology called ADSL.
Why the sudden flashback to 1999? Because that, according to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s website, was the last time the ICT National Curriculum for 5 to 11-year-olds was updated. Scan right down to the bottom of the page, and there you’ll find: “This content relates to the 1999 programmes of study and attainment targets.”
At first I thought this was a mistake, an outdated page that was left lingering by mistake on the QCA website. So I rang the QCA press office to point out this heinous error. “That is a long time ago,” said the press officer, before putting me on hold to check what had gone wrong. “Apparently, that is the current curriculum,” he proclaimed upon his return. “They’re in the process of updating it now.”
Indeed they are. It’s part of Sir Jim Rose’s review of primary education. The review that concluded that primary schools were failing to keep pace with children’s IT skills and that “ICT is not yet providing value for money in many schools.”
Is it any wonder when the guidelines are a decade out of date? Hence you’ll find pupils are required to “gather information from a variety of sources – for example, people, books, databases, CD-ROMs, videos and TV”, but there’s not even a mention of the internet in the entire key stage 1 ICT curriculum.
I’m sure most schools and teachers are smart enough to apply the curriculum to today’s technology – in fact I’ve seen first-hand evidence of it at my daughter’s new school. But surely the ICT curriculum should never be left to fester for so long again.
Tags: Education, ICT, ICT curriculum, QCA, Sir Jim Rose
Posted in: Newsdesk
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10 Responses to “ ICT curriculum last updated in… 1999 ”
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June 8th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
It’s a problem with certain parts of the education system as a whole: my old school chose an exam board for my Physics A-Level that used content from the late 1990’s(bear in mind I sat the exams in 2002/3)… the alternative was an exam board whose most recent content dated back to the late 1970’s…
Saying that it’s clear that IT education needs a huge amount of reform. I’d assume that the majority of visitors to PC Pro will understand the massive changes in IT over the last 10 years… and reform would undoubtedly be welcome not only as outlined above but also for the IT GCSE (I haven’t forgotten PC Pro’s rather poor attempts last year: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/199734/the-ridiculous-gcse-ict-exam-questions-that-beat-pc-pro.html : any chance the PC Pro staff will have another go?)
June 8th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Quote … ‘our news section was bemoaning the fact NT4 was a “secure as a piece of Swiss chesse” and’.
Even in 1999 they knew about spell-checkers that could spot “chesse” though systems may not have been able to identify the other error in the first paragraph.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I can certainly believe that. Had to install Encarta in 3 ICT Suites (at 3+ gigabytes per machine) simply because the syllabus required them to prove they could find and extract information from a disc-based encyclopaedia.
I pointed out that the software only initially started on a disc and was in fact installed locally on each hard drive (pushed out as a msi via the network), so if that counted, surely an Internet-based encyclopaedia (which would be stored on a server hard drive) would also count. Our head of ICT agreed, but the exam board didn’t, for some reason.
So now that all our GCSE students have completed that component of their coursework, I can no uninstall Encarta from those 90 PCs, ready to install it again for next year.
The best thing is that they search for Encarta files by going to the Encarta website, which then links them to files on the Internet, or files on the local disk. Guess which one has more content?
June 8th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Apologies for the typos. Back to school for me.
Barry Collins
Online Editor
June 8th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I agree completely with Chuz – we had to play a similar game to meet the outdated criteria for our GCSE specification.
However, I think the problem goes a bit deeper. What do we really want to get from IT qualifications?
We need to find a balance between training students in up to date skills (which will soon be out of date), “academic” theory (which gives ICT equivalence to other subjects) and finding a way to maintain some relevance to teenagers who have naturally developed web (especially social networking) skills but little understanding of what goes on “under the bonnet”. Add in the need to make all this useful to employers too, and it’s quite a challenge.
Perhaps the new Diplomas will save the day…
June 10th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
A large part of this problem is the totally centralised nature of “Education” in Britain. Although we domn’t (yet) aspire to the French model, where if its 10.46 this must be an algebra lesson, we are getting close! In the good old\bad old days pre Kenny Baker (for I think it was he) schools taught waht they considered appropriated for their pupils. Sometimes this was “good” often not. Post Ken schools have very little latitude to tailor what they do to suit what they have; in terms of pupils and resources its the classic “one size fits all”.
If you are of a political bent your question, to be answered in essay form, is:
“Compare and contrast the centralised nature of the British Education System after the 1988 Education Reform Act with the ‘de-centralising’ rhetoric of politicians.
The British Education System is very like a dinosaur: the “brain” (in Whitehall) is a very long way from its limbs, and even the simplest command to change direction takes an age to happen. In the case of IT Education this is exacurbated by the studied pose of ignorance of any ‘technical’ discipline essential for those who wish to climb the greasy pole.. History, Latin, English, Physics (etc) are all OK, and although the rate of change is slow, it is generally informed by some knowledge in the hierachy. ICT on the other hand might just as well be “Martian” for all the Mandarins know or care…..
That is not to say lip-service is not paid in full. My Mrs who is a Primary Head (and very IT savvy) recently attended some high-level DfE (or whatever it is this week) bash proclaiming the merits of ICT as part of the renewal of schools programme (a PFI programme). The problem is that most of thos epresent thought that all that is required is to bung in “Networks”. Nuff said….
June 11th, 2009 at 7:31 am
The link that you give is only to Key Stage 1, i.e. infant school up to the age of 7. Key Stage 2 does talk about the internet, so it is not totally primitive. The important thing to look for at primary school is the concepts and key skills (gathering information, sorting it and presenting it), which have not really changed since 1999.
Perhaps the real problem is not the lack of knowledge of state-of-the-art equipment, which will be forgotten about by the time these children leave school; but the lack of the one on-going key IT skill – the ability to touch type. If touch-typing was put alongside the 3Rs, that really would transform the skills base of this country.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
The acid test of today’s ICT is that in many cases the kids – even at primary school age – know more about the computer and how to do things than the teachers. If there is no academic-driven incentive to upgrade your skills as a teacher because of the need from the curriculum, why bother? You have enough other things to do.
When Microsoft are using a 5 year old, stitching photos together by himself using their software in their advertisments on TV, you know we lag behind. Ok, its a fair cop to be able to ‘know’ the background ‘theory’ of what is going on in the process but at this age its the engagement of doing something and producing something at the end that will spark the interest in the children.
And perhaps the teachers?
June 11th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I was talking to some GCSE IT students before their exam, and even though I do not do IT I found that I knew far more about real-world computing than them, for example what to actually do to recover Windows if it breaks that doesn’t involve a reinstall.
Also, one of the teachers couldn’t get their projector (connected to a laptop) to work. They summoned IT, who messed about for about 1/4 hour before giving up. The solution was pressing Fn+F8, but the IT teacher didn’t even come close.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Took me ages to find this post, this time I’ll bookmark it.