There were three agendas, he stated:

1. Impact of ICT on the things that we always wanted to reach – reading, writing and numeracy. You are more likely to get this where schools have targeted the use of ICT, obvious really but some people can’t see it – correlations prove it.

2. ICT can help with paperwork, bureaucracy and accountability.

3. KS3 – the future skills of people leaving school reflected in terms of employability.

He continued by saying that there are more people with ICT skills in the workplace than there are nurses. Will it be met by resources available? - 1.7m is not much.

All three agendas get differing political support. He then went on to talk about the KS3 strategy, which was aimed at raising standards in ICT. He outlined the key features:

Expectations – high of every pupil in every subject

Progression – continuous between KS2/3 and beyond in teaching and learning

Engagement – range of teaching approaches and contexts designed to unlock motivation

In terms of KS3, Neil referred to the main issue – “in only one third of schools at KS3 do pupils make good progress in ICT”

HMCI. He continued by saying that teacher results in ICT were a full level below other subjects – QCA. Either attainment is low or teacher confidence to make judgements is low.

This had a number of consequences:

• Unless there was good imbedded ICT at KS3 – then few will go on to do well at KS4. You need good imbedded qualifications/skills so that pupils can drive themselves and produce their own portfolios – pupil driven.
  
• Remedial ICT and presentation technologies need to be used by other subjects
  
• Consistent assessment grows out of a consensus on teaching and learning – otherwise you get lots of meaningless paper. The teacher and assessment system need to work in consensus and this consensus gives reliability.

He went on to outline the three dimensions needed for successful implementation of the KS3 strategy:

1. Curriculum dimension – lesson plans for year 7 available as exemplars for teaching ICT

2. Support dimension – developing models of locally provided school-based support for the ICT teacher. A leading ICT teacher who has a school base for training, is off timetable and an able to pilot materials

3. Assessment dimension – a test bed for KS3 assessment materials in ICT to be developed by QCA

Neil focussed on the Curriculum Design Model developed by Paul Black and Geoffrey Harrison at Nottingham Trent University.

Neil illustrated this by saying that if the pupils were given some text and they could be asked to format it as a poem. They could then be set the task of changing it from a happy poem to a sad one. The tasks could involve more processes by changing the poem into estate agent speak (replace spacious with small etc). ICT should be able to do this – cut and paste, search and replace for example - the processes used would be transferable.

He memorably compared unbalanced development in the stages as follows. Someone who has only mastered the facts stage is the sort of person who can win “who wants to be a Millionaire” but gets lost on a tube train. It is unapplied knowledge. Someone who has mastered the process stage without the base of facts is the classic “pub argument”. Lots of skills in articulation but without any foundation of fact. It is only when the two are married that the progression to capability can happen.

He went on to outline the timeline for KS3 developments:

Sept 2001 - The main pilot will start

June 2002 – Dissemination of key messages

In response to questions he stated that:

• Teachers should not invest heavily in new KS3 textbooks for the time being.
• Bits of the QCA scheme will change in the pilot
• There will be a framework of objectives
• The pace is sometimes too slow
• A sensible approach is needed to bringing it in before 2002
• Next year’s ACITT conference will have examples

In conclusion he stated that ICT was a very difficult subject to write about and a sensible approach to growing into the scheme of work was needed – we need to develop now for 2002 schemes.