Information Technology in English Schools

A commentary on inspection findings 1995-6

Office for Standards in Education Gabriel Goldstein HMI

Foreword

1Strategicissues arising from theinspection of IT

2Features of attainment and teaching across the key stages

3IT in primary schools -main findings

Commentary

Variation in standards and progress in IT
Indicators of good and of poor teaching and assessment Practice
Planning the curriculum in IT
Management and resources against a background of constant change

4IT in secondary schools - main findings

Commentary

Standards and progress - coverage of higher-order skills in IT
A cross-curricular approach to IT
The teaching and content of the IT curriculum
Induction and training of teachers involved in teaching IT

Foreword

Every year OFSTED's database forms the basis of HMCI's Annual Report and this includes a brief summary of standards in information technology. More detailed information and issues identified by inspection have in previous years been made available in the form of subject booklets or separate publications for primary and secondary schools. This year OFSTED is exploring other ways of disseminating inspection findings. The account that follows draws upon evidence from almost 50,000 lessons and a sample of published inspection reports.

These materials may be copied in whole or in part for educational use in the purchasing institution only, provided that their source is acknowledged. In no circumstances may copies be sold.

Published by NCET in conjunction with OFSTED

Contents

1 Strategic issues arising from the Inspection of IT

Of those countries which have a national curriculum, few, if any, have included information technology (IT) as strongly as England. The curricular requirements of the subject provide a sound basis for equipping our pupils with the skills, knowledge and understanding for a future in which IT will undoubtedly play an increasingly vital role in teaching and learning, in working life and in leisure, and where those who are 'IT illiterate' will become increasingly disadvantaged.
There is, moreover, wide variation in the incidence of home ownership of computers.About one third of English homes now have access to computers. This proportion isincreasing rapidly, and often the IT facilities available at home are more advanced than thosein schools.
These are promising trends for promoting pupils' achievements in IT. At the same time, however, there are clear signs of an unacceptable division in the educational provision and in pupils' achievement in IT. Despite some excellent work in some schools, inspection shows that, in most respects, IT is the least well taught of the subjects of our National Curriculum.
This is giving rise to a widening gap in which pupils from homes which are 'IT capable' and who are fortunate enough to attend schools where IT is properly resourced and well taught, are rapidly pulling ahead of those who lack sustained experience of working with computers either at home or at school. The challenge for a large proportion of schools, especially those serving areas where the ownership of home computers is low, is to enhance opportunities for their pupils to use IT by substantially improving their provision.
This, of course, is not a comfortable message at a time when the technology itself is changing rapidly. Many teachers have coped admirably with curricular and technological changes. But much remains to be done to improve professional practice in the teaching of IT, and in its productive use. In particular there is a need to:

improve teachers' confidence in using IT
develop a pedagogy for IT capability in terms of:

lesson planning, pupil assessment and differentiation
methodologies of teaching all aspects of the subject, whether in separate IT lessons or within other subjects
offering support to non-specialist teachers in the appropriate use of IT applications in teaching and independent study.

develop more strongly the methodologies of teaching other subjects with the aid of IT, and strengthen the networks and training facilities which disseminate good practice.

A wide range of hardware and software is now available which is appropriate for teaching the National Curriculum in IT and much beyond. Schools vary greatly in the extent to which they are able to afford to upgrade their IT resources regularly. But even where they do, what is often needed is a clearer vision by the school management of the role of IT and information handling, as a worthwhile body of skills and understanding which, when applied diligently, markedly strengthens other aspects of the curriculum. The quality of curriculum planning for IT and its application, of subject management and staff development are very often unacceptably low. Training schemes for senior managers have not addressed this sufficiently.
To help address the pedagogical, management and organisational issues associated with IT, many schools will need greater access to sustained, high-quality national and local support. Lessons should be learnt from earlier stages of successful curriculum development in IT in this country, when such support entailed opportunities for teachers and teacher educators to sustain professional networks which addressed the teaching of IT and its uses in the curriculum.
We hope this report will be of interest and value to teachers and schools and those who offer them support for IT, as well as those responsible for taking decisions on the future of the National Curriculum.

Contents

2 Features of attainment and teaching across the key stages

Contents

3 IT in primary schools: summary of main findings

5Overall standards of achievement in IT varied unacceptably between schools. Judged across whole schools, achievements continued to be lower than in any other National Curriculum subject. In only one third of schools at Key Stage1 and at Key Stage 2, did pupils achieve good standards, sometimes involving very advanced, high-level work in IT (see Table 3). In others the work was mostly superficial and dull. In over a fifth of schools in Key Stage 1 and in a third of schools in Key Stage 2, pupils' overall achievement was poor.1

6Pupils' attainments in IT increasingly reflect the levels of challenge provided by the school and the access they have to information technology outside. Poor provision in the school often restricted the performance of pupils who evidently had access to IT at home. The teaching of functions of computer applications improved in comparison with previous years as teachers' confidence grew, but there was a tendency for adults to accept pupils' IT-based tasks as having been satisfactorily completed at too early a stage, when further development or refinement of the work would have been appropriate.

7Some teachers have worked very hard to secure a greater breadth of curriculum coverage in IT in the year under review, and therefore more schools covered more aspects of the Order for IT than in recent years. The planning and content of IT activities were slightly improved.

8Nevertheless, only half the primary schools met the requirements of the National Curriculum in IT (see Table 9). The scarcity of work involving controlling and modelling meant that pupils were not able to show achievements in these aspects to match those in communicating and handling information.

9Teachers' command of the subject remained very weak (see Table 6), though there was an improvement in Key Stage 2, associated with the greater access primary teachers had to their own home equipment, and to the presence of more modern IT facilities in some schools.

10Initial and in-service professional training and technical support for IT-based work have not kept pace with the rapid changes in technology. The situation is exacerbated where IT co-ordinators have virtually no time during the school day to help teachers to evaluate and develop their work in IT.

Contents

IT in Primary schools: Commentary

Variation in standards and progress in IT
Indicators of good and of poor teaching and assessment
Planning the curriculum in IT
Management and resources against a background of constant change

Variation in standards and progress in IT

9Much valuable work is associated with IT from the early years, and for most pupils IT continues to offer motivation, interest and challenge. Some skilful and creative work this year was associated with drawing and design programs, and there were some impressive multimedia productions involving electronically captured images and sound. Apart from manipulating text and graphics, most pupils used data-handling programs to store and retrieve data and were able to print out results and graphs with confidence. It was less common, however, for pupils to interpret and draw conclusions from such output. At best, pupils were able to browse usefully in CD-ROM resources and comment about the data they retrieved or captured with a data logger. Although use of CD-ROM discs increased again this year, the quality of interrogation varied greatly and there was much superficial and unstructured use of potentially rich resources.

10In terms of gaining a balanced range of IT skills and insights, overall progress was slower in both key stages than for most other subjects. A gulf seems to be emerging in IT capability between reasonably resourced schools with generally enthusiastic, IT-confident and knowledgeable pupils, and poorly resourced or supported schools which provide a relatively narrow experience of IT, and whose pupils leave with an uneven or insufficient understanding of information handling and control and with depressed levels of communication skills.

Contents

Indicators of good and of poor teaching and assessment

11In the best practice, teachers foster the IT skills, knowledge and understanding required by the National Curriculum Order through carefully structured tasks, and some explicit teaching, where necessary, by an adult or a peer with IT expertise. Pupils are encouraged to become autonomous users of IT facilities, and the outcomes of their work are subjected to encouraging, yet critical, scrutiny appropriate to ensure that they are fit for purpose, so that, for example:

textual and graphical material are as accurate and expressive as may be expected from a particular pupil
displayed items are properly labelled and contain pupils' own extensive comments on contexts and about any patterns or features noted
successive versions of an item of work are kept in electronic or printed form to allow adults to monitor progress and encourage development where appropriate
over the years pupils show a growing awareness of audience and a growing sophistication in interpreting and displaying data.

12In less satisfactory lessons, tasks are set which appear to reflect the formal requirements of Programmes of Study in IT; however, pupils work in isolation and outcomes are not monitored, assessed or developed through teaching or adequate supervision. In such lessons pupils may be asked to discover how a floor turtle reacts to various instructions but knowledge gained is not followed up with challenging problems, such as how to instruct the device to perform more complex journeys or varied effects. Too often pupils' confidence with and enthusiasm for, IT are mistaken as evidence of high achievement and pupils' work with IT is recorded simply by referring to items of software or hardware they have used, rather than tracking the skills, knowledge and understanding they have gained.

Contents

Planning the curriculum in IT

13There has been a continued movement towards greater compliance with National Curriculum requirements, with more schools offering a more balanced, or more extensive, coverage of various aspects of the IT Order than in previous years. Nevertheless, in only about half the schools were statutory requirements met. Curriculum planning was particularly weak during the year under review in respect of modelling and control.

14Schools often had a scheme of work which showed which aspects of IT would be taught, and which resources would be used. The best schemes also showed the contexts in which particular IT applications would be employed, and offered clear guidance for teachers and classroom assistants by suggesting appropriate tasks and expected outcomes, or referencing sources of information, which could address specific Programmes of Study. Of less use in teaching IT were brief notes which simply listed software resources in connection with a topic about, say, local history, but gave insufficient guidance on what teachers should expect pupils to achieve in terms of, say, skills of selecting and retrieving information and interpreting it, or the historical and IT insights to be gained. The best schemes were followed in practice, but a good scheme of work for IT needs support and management to ensure it is applied, reviewed and resourced by informed and competent members of staff.

Contents

Management and resources against a background of constant change

15As technology is developing at an ever quickening rate, the management of IT presents a significant challenge. Allocations of curriculum and staff time and material resources to this aspect of the curriculum are usually associated with large-scale costs, and have to contend with other pressing priorities in a primary school. The energy and resourcefulness of senior management and many IT co-ordinators devoted to the development of IT this year were impressive.

16The bulk of government funding for education received by LEAs is now delegated to schools, including those Grants for Educational Support and Training (GEST) intended specifically for IT. Governors and headteachers display widely differing attitudes towards IT work, and many schools consider the sums available for IT to be too small to procure external training and advice. A growing number of schools look to their IT co-ordinators to guide other staff in IT, albeit often single-handedly, with insufficient external support and with almost no non-teaching time.

17For IT to be well managed, schools need to ensure that their subject leaders are not professionally isolated and do not become dated in their knowledge of IT and how the teaching of various topics might be enhanced with IT. The bulk of in-service training offered to primary teachers has been in-house, and such training has been valuable in spreading familiarity with IT skills and facilities and National Curriculum requirements. However, such in-house training often stops short of providing sufficient guidance on how to make the most of particular applications or of IT tasks in class, and what might reasonably be expected of pupils.

18To be effective, IT co-ordinators require the time and facilities to link with other schools and with providers of in-service training, curriculum development and technical support. Crucially, they also need time and opportunities to work with colleagues and to monitor and promote pupils' progress in IT throughout the school.

Contents

IT in Secondary schools CommentaryContents

Standards and progress - coverage of higher-order skills in IT

A cross-curricular approach to IT

The teaching and content of the IT curriculum

Induction and training of teachers involved in teaching IT

Standards and progress - coverage of higher-order skills in IT

19IT became an identifiable component of the National Curriculum in secondary schools as recently as 1991. This curriculum represents a more comprehensive set of expectations for all pupils in IT capability than most other countries have, and most schools have worked conscientiously to adapt to these new requirements. Although pupils have little difficulty with technical aspects such as using facilities and applications, the higher-level capabilities associated with information handling and adding value with IT have proved more elusive. These higher-order skills specified in the National Curriculum are the ones intended to equip pupils for life in the next century.

20Typically, pupils continue to be enthusiastic about IT. They gain considerable expertise in using the main IT tools of word processing, database and graphics software and spreadsheets. At best they are confident in handling hardware and software and show remarkable versatility in moving easily from one application to another, for example, from desktop publishing to spreadsheet or graphics applications. Pupils are often proud of the outcomes they produce, but the range of work to which they apply their skills is often narrow and involves only short, specific tasks and projects which, once done, are not subsequently reviewed or developed. It is thus not uncommon for pupils to learn a range of useful new techniques with networks or with systems which are more versatile than the ones they used in primary schools. Yet pupils' higher-order skills of critical and sensitive IT application; of investigation of patterns, for instance with turtle graphics or spreadsheets; and of non-trivial problem solving, remain under-developed.

21Standards of achievement in IT lessons, where the emphasis is often on the acquisition of specific technical knowledge and skills, were comparable with those observed in other subjects (see Table 1). But when the IT work of all pupils in a school's key stage was considered, the pupils were more often judged to be falling short of their achievements and progress in other subjects. This was because:

individual pupils were not comfortable with all aspects of the IT Attainment Target if lessons covered only some of the Programmes of Study for IT
aspects of IT which were taught were not consolidated and applied, where, for example, only a few pupils experienced data logging in practice after one lesson about the subject or few had opportunities to discuss the results obtained
displayed and other work indicated that IT applications had made only modest demands on pupils in terms of judging appropriateness of IT use, sensitivity to audience and context, economy of means and autonomy in selecting and interpreting information.
Secondary

22Changes in Programmes of Study and the suspension during 1995&endash;6 of the requirement for formal assessment of IT work in Key Stage 4 led some schools to be less rigorous in teaching IT and monitoring achievement (see Tables 12 and 13). Many pupils therefore opted out of Key Stage 4 IT courses, and their progress and attainments in the subject suffered. This contributed to the disappointing achievements in IT in 1995/6 in this key stage compared with the previous year's – which had already been weaker than achievements in all subjects.