The importance of ICT in Primary and Secondary Schools

OFSTED published a report on The Importance of ICT last week and it can be download from here
http://tinyurl.com/bllnbb.

Be warned the report is a lengthy 40 pages, with 116 points presented in two main parts:
A) The quality of ICT in Leanring
B) Issues (which need to be takled to increae engagement and raise attainment)

A couple of points which struck a chord with our priorities and focus for our ICT strategy in Islington included:
Section B which opens with a section on Assessment (Page 29) as a driver for improving ICT capability, reporting one in five of the schools inspected had no systems for assessing levels of ICT capability. They rarely had a formal system for tracking the progress of individual pupils and students, and they were unaware of how well they were doing.

The final part of section B 'Getting ICT to the learning' (page 35) highlighted althought nationally the use of ICT in other subjects is generally improving, the picture this survey establishes is one of patchy provision and inconsistent progress.
It points to a critial issues of resourcing which we have been discussing with schools on the place for an ICT suite. The report states .... schools have successfully created a demand from teachers to be able to use ICT to improve learning in other subjects but are rarely able to meet it. Most primary and secondary schools have chosen to centralise the bulk of their ICT resources in networked computer rooms……but the result is that resources are often extremely limited elsewhere for work in other subjects. It is still common to see students taking work from other subjects to the computer room where they are using ICT, in effect, only to present their ideas well. When ICT is unavailable to students in their classrooms when they are studying other subjects, it is unable to contribute to improving learning.

Read other comments in a blog from a CLC in Manchester who had a review mirroring some of our thoughts and included other interesting points. http://tinyurl.com/a9l7pa