The Vital Blog

At the ITTE Annual Conference last week I had interesting discussions with a range of folk, including Simon Peyton Jones from CAS, about the Naace/CAS/ITTE joint paper. I think we made significant progress in addressing some of the concerns that I have expressed about our joint statement (I say ‘our’ because I am a member of all three organisations!).

Ok, so I am somewhat evangelical about thinking we need to define key terms related to ICT (see http://www.vital.ac.uk/blog/what-do-you-mean-ict). I genuinely believe that many of the problems we have had with ‘ICT’ in education come down to us talking at cross-purposes because we use terms sloppily. 

I’m working on the assumption that the ICT PoS will reflect the view of the Royal Society Report on Computing in Schools, which recommended that all pupils should have a broadly based Computing curriculum - the Royal Society explicitly equates Computing with ICT, so they are recommending a broadly based ICT curriculum, which should include elements of IT, Computer Science and Digital Literacy. Pupils should then (at Key Stage 4) have the option to study Computer Science as a specialism.

At the Westminster Education Forum on the 12th June 2012 Vanessa Pittard spelt out the DfE’s current position on ICT in the National Curriculum. Here is a summary of the key points:

1. The ICT Programmes of Study (PoS) and Attainment Targets (ATs) are being suspended from September 2012.

2. Schools will continue to be required to teach ICT across all Key Stages.

3. Schools are free to continue to use the PoS and ATs if they wish.

Progress has been made in clarifying the debate and moving towards agreement about how to address problems with the teaching of ICT in schools. However, there are still areas where effort is being wasted in arguing at cross purposes or  about issues which are ‘academic’ and ignore the practical realities of the review of the National Curriculum (NC).