Daniel Stucke

At our school we took the decision last Summer to embrace the opportunities available to move away from National Curriculum levels. Our approach isn't revolutionary, but I think it's worth sharing.

Background

I personally felt that there were numerous issues with the old NC levels. They were not as well understood by parents / pupils / parents as everybody thought. A false sense of accuracy had been developed as levels morphed into sub-levels, did anyone really know the difference between a 5c and a 5b? At a whole school level far too many schools, ourselves included were chasing sub-levels around in circles looking for 'rapid and sustained progress'. They also lost so much detail, everyone would hang their hat on that one level. But a 5b could hide a myriad of important information. A student might have real strength in Shape and Data in Maths but be struggling with their Number and Algebra skills. We were also in the process of re-writing schemes for learning so it made sense to tackle the two jobs together.

Desired outcomes

Initial work was done between myself and our school improvement partner. We looked at the core outcomes we wanted from our assessment systems. Primarily we wanted to refocus assessment in the classroom on the learning. All assessment should help teachers and students understand which key concepts they had grasped and which they had not. Secondly we wanted a system that could report as efficiently and simply as possible to governors, leadership, teachers, students and parents which students were making expected progress in which subjects. On reflection that's what all school wide level analysis looked at. And when it involved chasing 2-3 sub levels per year it was a nightmare.

Expected Progress

The National Curriculum and the GCSE programmes of study set in stone expected learning at the end of KS2, KS3 and KS4. School performance measures set 'expected' progress from KS2-4. Whilst measures are changing at both KS2 and KS4 we felt confident that learners would still join us banded into High/Middle/Low 5+/4/3- attainment bands. And expected progress will still be around the equivalent of three levels of progress.

With this in mind our model takes each subject, splits this into three bands, and maps out the expected learning in each year to ensure that middle level learners join us and progress to at least a grade C+ equivalence. High level attainers to B+ etc.

We asked each academic subject to map out the learning for each of their three bands. Pasting in the GCSE PoS outcomes into Y11, and any NC outcomes into Y8 (we have moved to a 2 year KS3). Then shuffling these around to form their high level scheme of work.

Milestones

Anyone who has read the NC or GCSE PoS's will know that the language used therein is not great for use with pupils and parents. We asked our teams to cut these down to the key 'milestones' that were crucial for progress in the subject. And we asked them to re-write these in language that pupils and parents would understand, without dumbing them down too much, I do think we should avoid hiding away from subject specific terminology. Staff were encouraged to use blooms and SOLO taxonomy language and structures as a guide in this process. This gave us a roadmap for each subject detailing exactly what we expected a student to learn each year, and it gave us a framework of expected knowledge and skills to assess learning against.

As an example the Computing roadmap is below:

Reporting on progress

Each assessment window (we have four a year) we ask staff to report on each student's progress. They simply report on whether students are making Significantly Above / Above / On / Below / Significantly Below expected progress. This judgment is made by taking a range of formative and summative assessment information and judging whether a student is on track to learn what is expected of them according to the milestone pathways.

Needless to say this makes reporting at class/subject/year group level incredibly easy, a simple tally and percentage of each grade allows us to monitor progress at this level.

Staff also record the next two key milestones that a student needs to master in order to make maximum progress. This might be a key skill that they should have mastered by now but are struggling with, or it might be an important topic that will be covered in coming weeks. Parents get a quarterly report detailing the SA/A/O/B/SA progress measures along with a pair of key milestones for each subject.

Reflections two terms in

I'm pleased with how things have gone so far. Staff worked incredibly hard over the Summer to write the frameworks for this to work. I do believe we have a system that has fulfilled our original aims. More assessment is focussed on specific areas of progress, the entire data collection and analysis system is far simpler, freeing our middle and senior leaders and reporting to governors et al is simplified.

I worry we may have set our expectations too low. 'Expected progress' was set at the old equivalent of three levels of progress form KS2-4. We took the measure of 'expected' as per performance tables and mapped it to individuals, sometimes individual expectations need to be different to those we 'expect' of classes or year groups. The more work I've done in successful schools during my NPQH the more I've realised that setting an 'expectation' high than that can lead to higher expectations from staff, parents and pupils of what progress is possible, and in turn leads to better progress. This was always planned as a flexible model that we could tweak as expectations and measures at KS2 and KS4 change and as the new PoS's come into force. We will review formally at the end of the year and if we have to slide milestones around to raise expectations then so be it.

We have been through a brief spell of 're-calibration'. Analysing the data showed that more students than should have been were making 'expected progress' and less than should have been were making 'above expected progress'. On discussion with middle leaders and teachers it was clear that staff had set the bar a little too low when making judgements of 'expected progress'. And conversely too high for 'above expected'. Also staff were forgetting where students had started their journey. Those who joined us as level 4 learners and had worked hard for several years were being judged as making 'expected progress' because that's what staff had come to expect from them. When in fact, in terms of KS2-now measures they were working well 'above expected'. Much as it pained me a little to talk levels again, the diagram below helped staff to re-calibrate in their minds our progress statements.

Back in September I was keen to get the Computing teaching community to work together to write a bank of high quality multiple choice questions. In fact, rather poorly, it was the last thing I wrote on this blog! Head back to see why I think that good quality MCQs can be an invaluable part of assessment for learning. Some educators got in touch and sent me some questions, but a lack of common format and no central repository curtailed my enthusiasm for the idea.

Step in www.diagnosticquestions.com. This fantastic site is the brainchild of @mrbartonmaths.

There are lots of sites out there that support MCQs, there are a few reasons why I think www.diagnosticquestions.com stands out:

It's free.

It's really easy to add questions, including as images. So if people already have quizzes as html files, or moodle quizzes or powerpoint or whatever then they can get transferred in here pretty easily with a simple screenshot upload.

Students have to explain their answer for every answer. And then they get to compare their explanations to the best ones from students around the world. Fantastic for them, and also fantastic for teachers to delve into understanding, or lack there of.

It would be fantastic if some of the Computing teaching community could chip in with questions of their own. Whilst I've put most up so far credit is due to the brilliant @mrocallaghanedu who wrote and shared them originally on his blog.

I plan to use small quizzes each lesson on the run up to exams to ensure that students and myself know what they know, and more importantly know where the gaps are. They can revise to the gaps, and I can teach to them. Of course this will be supplimented with lengthier question types akin to those found in the exam. I also hope to get some of my more able students to write MCQs of their own. It's no easy task and really tests your subject knowledge, a perfect task for those pushing A/A* grades this Summer in the GCSE.

The Diagnostic Questions site:

A plea to teachers of Computing GCSE, please join an effort to write a bank of high quality multiple choice questions to support the teaching of this course.

Why multiple choice questions?

There is an increasing body of research and writing showing that skilfully written multiple choice questions are an effective means of developing retention. They are easy to administer and easy to mark, particularly in an IT rich environment. My experience (and looking at OCR data, most other school’s experience) is that students perform poorly on the written examination part of the GCSE. Their retention and recall of the knowledge needed to succeed in the exam is poor.

Well written multiple choice questions could be used: - as lesson starters / plenaries etc to revisit learning covered earlier in the course, helping to develop retention - as hinge questions in the middle of a lesson as part of the AfL process - as small assessments of units of work - without the wrong answers, as flashcards for learner’s revision

Further reading

My thoughts on this have been shaped by some excellent writing and research online… - Joe Kirby - How to design multiple-choice questions - Daisy Christodoulou - Research on multiple choice questions - Robert Bjork - Multiple-Choice Tests Exonerated, at Least of Some Charges: Fostering Test-Induced Learning and Avoiding Test-Induced Forgetting - Dylan Wiliam - When is assessment learning orientated - Dylan Wiliam & Caroline Wylie - Diagnostic Questions: Is there value in just one? - David Didau - How effective learning hinges on good questioning

Interested?

Great! I have set up a Google Form for you to submit your questions and answers. I’ve split the Computing GCSE up into a few high level topic areas to categorise each question. Once you’ve shared some questions I will happily give you access to the spreadsheet behind the form and what will hopefully grow into a large bank of high quality questions. If you have lots that you’ve already prepared and want to send me an email with them in a different format that would be wonderful. I’ll do my best to add them into the rest without you having to copy each one in to the form.

7 Principles for Designing Multiple Choice Options

Quality questions that help develop retention need carefully crafted options for the answers. Please follow these guidelines when constructing your questions and answers.

With his permission, I’ve shamelessly stolen this list from Joe Kirby.

The proximity of options increases the rigour of the question For instance, the question is, what year was the battle of Hastings? Options 1065, 1066, 1067, 1068 or 1069 are more rigorous than options 1066, 1166, 1266, 1366 or 1466. Of course, the question itself also determines the rigour: ‘80 is what percentage of 200?’ is much easier than ‘79 is what percentage of 316?’  

The number of incorrect options increases rigour Three options gives pupils a 33% chance of guessing the correct answer; five options reduces the chances of guessing to 20%; always create five rather than three or four options for multiple choice questions. A ‘don’t know’ option prevents pupils from blindly guessing, allowing them to flag up questions they’re unsure about rather than getting lucky with a correct guess. With this in mind the form will accept questions of the form:

- 1 correct answer from a total of 4 - 1 correct answer from a total of 5 - 2 correct answers from a total of 5 - 2 correct answers from a total of 6 The further down that list the less chance someone can guess the answer correctly. 3. Incorrect options should be plausible but unambiguously wrong If options are too implausible, this reduces rigour as pupils can too quickly dismiss them. For instance, in the question: what do Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist have in common, an implausible option would be that they were both bank robbers. However, if answers are too ambiguously similar, this creates problems. For instance, in the question, ‘What happens in the plot of Oliver Twist?’, these options are too ambiguous: a) A young boy runs away to London b) An orphan falls in with a street gang of street urchins c) A poor orphan is adopted by a wealthy gentleman d) A criminal murders a young woman and is pursued by a mob e) A gang of pickpockets abduct a young boy 4. Incorrect options should be frequent misconceptions where possible For example, if you know pupils often confuse how autobiographical ‘Oliver Twist’ is, create options as common confusions. These distractors flag up what pupils are thinking if they select an incorrect option: a) Both were born in a workhouse b) Both were separated from their parents and family c) Both were put in prison for debt d) Both had families who were put in prison for debt e) Both were orphans 5. Multiple correct options make a question more rigorous. Not stating how many correct options there are makes pupils think harder. For example: Which characteristics of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” can be seen as Romantic? a) It celebrates the supernatural. b) It is written in iambic pentameter. c) It emphasises emotion over reason. d) It deals with the lives of common people. e) It aspires to nature and the sublime. 6. The occasional negative question encourages kids to read the questions more carefully. Once they get a question like ‘Which of these is NOT a cause of World War 1?‘ wrong, and realise why, they’ll work out they need to read questions again to double-check on what it is they’re asking. 7. Stretch questions can be created with comparisons or connections between topics. What was common to both the USA and Germany during the Great Depression? a)     Jewish immigration increased b)     Membership of Ku Klux Klan increased c)     Public works projects were implemented d)     Government social programs were reduced

Still here? Then let us begin!

The form is available here http://bit.ly/multicompq. Don’t rush, fashion some great questions as you go throughout this year. Together we can make a powerful learning resource. And hopefully many hands will make light work of the task!

I've been using the excellent Editorial app on my iPad increasingly for all my writing and note taking needs. Editorial is a geeky combination of text editor and Python programming playground. You can create or install workflows that do everything from basic text formatting to highlighting verbs to sharing the text with other services like Evernote. It's great, particularly if you're writing for the web as it's ridiculously easy to use the in built browser to find websites and then quickly copy links across to your writing.

You will quickly grow a large list of workflows that can become quite a pain to navigate. The latest update to Editorial has added tags. My top tip and the point of this post is to recommend that instead of using words to tag your workflows, use the inbuilt Emoji that come with iOS 🔡🔧↗️🔗💻🔎📝. You'll end up with a simple menu bar that doesn't scroll way off the sidebar. Something like this:

I hope someone finds this tip useful!

How accurately can we set targets and predict performance of pupil's exam attainment?

At this time of year the pressure is on teachers and leaders in school to know exactly how their young people will perform in the GCSE exams that they are currently sitting.

There is an expectation from leaders, governors and of course Ofsted to accurately track, monitor and predict pupil progress and hence exam performance.

Our school, like every other in the country, set targets for individual pupils at the start of the year and then ask the teachers to measure the pupil's progress in comparison to this target grade, and to predict their final exam grade. These are collated and a range of performance measures for classes, subjects and the whole school are calculated.

But how accurate are these and how confident can we be in these predictions and targets? Our school has 155 young people in year 11. And some subjects have as few as 15 learners. One or two students having a bad day in the exam, or realising too late that they picked a subject that they really don't enjoy, can have a large impact on the results. How much should we take this into account when setting targets and holding teachers and middle leaders to account?

This train of thought has led me to look at the use of confidence intervals. I've used the binomial proportion confidence interval to calculate the 95% confidence interval on the number of students predicted to achieve a C+ in each subject. This takes into account the size of the class.

I've ended up with results such as: English C+ = 79% +/- 6%. So we're 95% sure they will end up with results between 73% and 85%. Computing, with a smaller number of students, comes in at 70% +/- 16%.

Is this an appropriate statistical measure to use?

The confidence intervals are quite large due to the small number of students involved. I'm not sure if this appropriate though? This measure is normally used when sampling a small part of a larger population. Is that what we are doing here? In that our Computing class is a small sample of the national group sitting that examination? Or are we actually sampling the whole population where that population is simply all the students studying it at our school?

If this is not that right measure of confidence to use in this case then what is?

Computing Reading List

Simple Things - 5 Minute Lesson Plan - iPad Edition.

I love the 5 Minute Lesson Plan, the wonderful TeacherToolkit should be very proud of it. It's all but superseded our school lesson plan proforma for most staff and I can understand why.

The best medium I've found to date for using it is the good old fashioned piece of paper. It just works best when you're scribbling down ideas. Typing onto it is just unpleasant.

But I don't like paper, I lose paper, and next year when I want to see it again the paper is gone.

Step in the iPad, Penultimate and a stylus.

To set this up you can follow these simple instructions:

Save the image above to your iPad camera roll. (Press the right arrow to get the blank image.)

Inside any Penultimate Notebook, tap the Papers icon on the top right corner of your screen. Hit the (+) sign, then Continue to add a new Paper.

Select the image you’d like to create your Paper from, and name the Paper whatever you would like.Click on your custom Paper to start writing or drawing, just as you normally would.

It will now be the default Paper when you create new pages in your current notebook. If you switch Papers or Notebooks and then want to return to the last selection, you can find it in My Papers.

Hope you find this useful. The updated edition of Penultimate is great, and this means I can now quickly scribble down lesson plans and keep a permanent record of them in Evernote.

It's hard to believe it's a year since Round 1 of the English GCSE fiasco. Is Round 2 about to kick off? Don't be surprised if it does!

Will teachers and students be knocked out again?

Just to recap:

Accountability pressures from league tables etc led to lots of schools entering students for their GCSE English in January and/or July.

This skewed the January results and led to exam boards / Ofqual setting boundaries that made it a bit too easy to get a C grade in the January exam.

In July, exam boards / Ofqual realised their mistake and moved the grade boundaries for students that sat the exam in July. This made the headline C+ figure fit with Government expectations, but meant that students who sat the July exam sat an unfairly harder exam than those who sat it in January.

Thousands of schools and young people cried foul.

Results stood.

Ofqual & Gove announced changes to try and stop this happening in future. January results haven't been released this year, they will be moderated in the Summer at the same time as the July entries. Going forward early entry is being squeezed out as an option. Controlled Assessments will be wound back in due course to alleviate alleged (but not to my knowledge, evidenced) cheating by teachers.

The impact of this is still being felt across the Secondary sector. Schools dropped below floor targets, I'm sure people directly or indirectly will have lost jobs. English departments with many years of experience were left questioning their knowledge of the curriculum, not quite sure what a Grade C student looked like any more.

The pressure on schools to get students through English and Maths at a 'pass' grade of C has not diminished. Moves to focus on levels of progress in the future are welcome but I don't believe they will impact on the tendency for %C+ in English & Maths being the headline measure that schools are held to account with.

But it's not just the pressure on schools, it's also the pressure on young people. The constant rhetoric of students achieving 'good' GCSEs or 'passing' their GCSEs from Government and through the press means that it's never been more important for learners to leave with a C in Maths and in English. Not having these grades puts them at a huge disadvantage at every possible next (and future) step of their education or employment.

So schools have been looking for ways to increase the number of learners getting this magic grade. Early entry, multiple entry, iGCSE entry or combinations of all three have taken place. Ofqual have been getting in early this year with warnings that this will skew results next week. This feels slightly ominous to me.

Many schools have looked to enter students for the International GCSE or iGCSE. Entries are up from 18,000 to 63,000 this year, including 20,000 late entries. The logic is clear, it's seen as an 'easier' option, with clearer controlled assessment requirements, clearer exam questions and a more reliable structure. Some schools have switched entirely to the qualification, some have moved key cohorts to the qualification and some have entered students in addition to the normal English Language GCSE as a 'second chance'.

The Independent have a sensationalist article claiming the 'gamble' has failed. It's poorly thought out. Yes the percentage of students getting A* and C+ grades have fallen, but that fails to take into account the makeup of the population sitting the qualification this year. iGCSEs have historically been the preserve of Independent Schools (who have clearly been wise to it's charms way before state schools). Talented, well supported learners who have been paying for very expensive educations tend to get pretty good results. The extra 45,000 entries this year are very different, almost all will be state school students, and in particular the majority of these will be C/D borderline students. Ring any bells? This is exactly what happened with the January GCSE entries last year.

We entered our borderline students for the iGCSE. They seem to have done incredibly well. Excitement will be reserved until all the results are in next week.

If lots of schools have entered borderline students for the iGCSE and if lots of them have done well then the next week could be interesting.

iGCSE results are out and set in stone now. Combined with the effects of multiple entries etc., they could positively influence the overall national figures for English C+ and 5A*-C with English & Maths. Which makes me nervous. Ofqual & Gove will not want to see any dramatic jumps in performance. The only other way to influence this would be to tamper with the grade boundaries for the normal English GCSE again. And they have form.

As long as the league tables and press / Government obsession with grade C's remains, this merry go round will continue. Schools have to look for every opportunity to get the best figures they can, they would be letting the students down if they didn't. We should of course be looking to give students a rounded education and a love of both English and Mathematics but that ignores the results driven culture that pervades every aspect of Britain today.

April the 16th is the deadline for responses to the Draft National Curriculum Programmes of Study. Much has been written and said about the creation of the Computing nee ICT programme of study and it's creation process. I've written myself around the topic a number of times over it's journey from the Nesta report to our decision to start a Computing GCSE back in 2011 (feeling pretty smug about that decision!) to the diss-application of the old PoS to our new KS3 curriculum.

Really I should respond to the proposals, so here in the interest of sharing and discussing are my (personal) responses to the official consultation. I'll try my best to avoid the politics and keep our young people and their futures at the heart of this response.

The response below largely refers to Computing/ICT, much as I could be tempted into discussing other subjects.

1.Do you have any comments on the proposed aims for the National Curriculum as a whole as set out in the framework document?

It is sad to see English education being reduced to "core knowledge". There is a real danger that an overly prescriptive curriculum, based on too much core knowledge, combined with the ongoing pressures of league tables and Ofsted will lead many weaker teachers and schools to cramming facts into our young learners. Will this develop the skills and competencies for future learning and work that they will require? I don't think so. I'll never argue that learning times tables and other key pieces of knowledge are crucial, but that's not al there is to education is it?

2.Do you agree that instead of detailed subject-level aims we should free teachers to shape their own curriculum aims based on the content in the programmes of study?

In principal yes. But where there are extensive changes, the Computing curriculum being the most obvious, it is important that sufficient support is available for schools and teachers to create effective curricula.

3.Do you have any comments on the content set out in the draft programmes of study?

The Computing programme of study is a massive change from ICT. I'm in support of replacing much of the old PoS, as is evident in much of my previous writing. Programming and a more detailed understanding of how computers work is important.

The PoS that has been proposed seems to be heavily weighted towards Computing/Computer Science, at the expense of creative pursuits and digital literacy. Whilst they are clearly left in the final two points of the KS3 PoS, they seem to have been left in as an afterthought. Whether that's the intention, it is certainly the appearance that is given.

Some of the Computer Science points are somewhat extreme. I'm not at all convinced that all 13 year olds need to understand 2 sorting algorithms and two searching algorithms, and I'm quite convinced that they do not need to be able to represent text or images in binary by hand! There is plenty of time for those students who wish to continue with Computing at GCSE level to pick up these more detailed skills at this point.

For those who will not work in the IT industry or go on to develop their programming skills in more detail this proposed PoS does not offer enough opportunities for learners to develop their skills of safely, creatively using IT to solve problems, something that every one of them will need to be able to do for the rest of their life.

4.Does the content set out in the draft programmes of study represent a sufficiently ambitious level of challenge for pupils at each key stage?

See answer to section 3.

5.Do you have any comments on the proposed wording of the attainment targets?

See answer to section 3.

6.Do you agree that the draft programmes of study provide for effective progression between the key stages?

Progression in knowledge maybe. But it is very unclear how this progression is to be measured. I'm no huge fan of National Curriculum levels as can be seen in our research work on Badges for assessment. But they have certainly served a purpose, particularly in core subjects. If we are still to be measured on the levels of progress from KS2 to KS3 and KS2 to KS4 then what will these measures be based upon? It's not even clear if KS2 levels will continue within core subjects - but that's a whole different conversation. As ASCL's quality response suggests, educators are more than capable of replacing NC Levels with something better, but again we need the time and collaboration opportunities to develop these. The complete lack of clarity in this area is of real concern.

7.Do you agree that we should change the subject information and communication technology to computing to reflect the content of the new programmes of study?

What's in a name? I have no issues with the change to 'Computing'. Politics and policies have muddied the name of ICT so a change can't do much harm.

8.Does the new National Curriculum embody an expectation of higher standards for all children?

If standards are measured in facts committed to memory by a certain age then yes. If standards mean skills for lifelong learning, and knowledge and understanding that develops at different rates for different learners, then I'm not sure it does.

9.What impact - either positive or negative - will our proposals have on the 'protected characteristic' groups.

There is significant danger that learners from protected characteristic groups will be turned off the use of IT in their future lives. The heavy focus on Computer Science will be a considerable learning challenge for them. Combined with the issues of delivering these (see subsequent comments on CPD) effectively they may well fail to progress in Computing, quickly become disaffected with the subject and leave school without basic digital literacies that they will need to access employment.

10.To what extent will the new National Curriculum make clear to parents what their children should be learning at each stage of their education?

The majority of parents will have little or no idea what the majority of the Computing points mean.

As far as clarifying which facts should be known by what age things should be relatively clear. Does that explain what students should actually be learning and how?

11.What key factors will affect schools’ ability to implement the new National Curriculum successfully from September 2014?

Three key factors put the success of the proposed KS3/4 PoS for Computing at huge risk of failure:

The content, as detailed in previous responses, risks turning many learners off the subject of Computing. Unless they are delivered with skills which leads on to…

Staff training:

Most schools in England will not be able to deliver the KS3 (&KS4) Computing programme of study from September 2014 without a massive investment in training. Our school has a talented ICT department however we consist of a Maths teacher, a Business Studies teacher and an unqualified ICT teacher (who fortunately understands programming). This is not atypical. I do not know the percentage of teachers teaching ICT at present who have degrees in Computer Science, or who can program, but I would estimate it at around 10%. That leaves approximately 90% of the ICT teaching workforce who do not know the content proposed in the PoS.

To teach well and deliver difficult concepts to students at an early age it is vital that teachers are experts in the field, that they have a deep understanding of the subject matter and hopefully experience of teaching it. This is all missing at present.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) demands to deliver this PoS at all, let alone by September 2014 will be huge. Most ICT teachers will need to learn to the concepts behind programming, then learn a programming language, and then will need to learn how to teach that knowledge effectively. That's hundreds of hours of training for most staff. Most teachers will receive around 25 hours of CPD a year on average. CPD budgets in schools are falling in line with overall falls in school budgets under the current government.

Where will the CPD programmes to support this proposed PoS come from? Who will fund them? Who will fund the supply cover required to back fill staff while they are out on this training?

All at once: Surely it would be sensible to stagger the introduction of the new curriculum. We will be elected to teach KS3 students this curriculum, which is very different from previously, despite those same students not having been exposed to any of the new Computing knowledge in the new KS3 curriculum. Are we to play catch up with everything that they would have learned in KS2 had this been introduced bit by bit?

12.Who is best placed to support schools and/or develop resources that schools will need to teach the new National Curriculum?

Local Authorities? Nope! Becta? Ha! Vital? Oops! Teaching Schools? Not sure the majority of them have Computer Science teams!

Joking aside, this is an issue. Following the issues over the drafting of the PoS are the relationships between the likes of Naace & BCS strong enough to develop the required support together? There will be plenty of people rubbing their hands with glee and offering expensive training courses and pre-packaged schemes of work for schools at a cost. Will these be tailored to the individual schools? Of course not.

The people best placed to support schools and develop resources are the teachers themselves. There is great creativity, ingenuity, dedication, skill and enthusiasm in the current ICT teaching community. Those with the Computer Science / programming skills will be all too happy to help. This has been seen for the past 7 years or so on Twitter and across teacher blogs. There is only so much work that these volunteers can do in their spare time, could funding be sought to allow them the time and space to collaborate. The Primary National Curriculum for Computing in ITT Expert Group's work at Primary level is a great example of what needs to be started at KS3.

13.Do you agree that we should amend the legislation to diss-apply the National Curriculum programmes of study, attainment targets and statutory assessment arrangements, as set out in section 12 of the consultation document?

Really not sure about this. What will Ofsted be looking for in classrooms in this 'fallow' year? Is this just a sneaky way of introducing the new PoS's a year early?

Summary

Don’t like to repost practically a whole blog post, but Darcy Norman’s EdTech predictions for 2013 hit a chord!

Would add in the middle:

Probably worth reading my last post about the disapplication of the previous ICT Program of Study and our plans to take it's place at KS3 before proceeding with this one.

So what have we done in the 4 months since my last post?

Our fabulous ICT Department have thrashed out what we believe to be the key elements of an ICT curriculum for 2012. Taking inspiration from many places (again see the last post) we've come up with a core set of topics which we believe will support our learners in accessing our two KS4 qualifications if they decide to do so in the future (GCSE Computing & Creative iMedia), whilst giving them the digital skills and literacies that we believe they will need to be successful in all areas of their future learning and work.

Our core topics are:

Living Online

Publishing Online

Formal Digital Communications

Researching Online

Digital Presenting

Visual Programming & Control

Text Based Programming

Handling Digital Data

Digital Imaging

Digital Video

Digital Sound

Project Planning

Project Evaluation

We've decided to call our new curriculum 'ICT' - after much debate we decided it still fits the job nicely!

We've also throughly embraced the idea of using badges to reward and assess progress. We're fortunate that I'm also responsible for data and assessment at our school so I've kindly given us permission to scrap National Curriculum levels entirely for KS3 ICT. In their place come our Badges, these will eventually be in Bronze, Silver & Gold levels for each topic. It's an interesting experiment but we really believe that knowing you've achieved a Silver Award in Digital Presentation and a Bronze Award in Living Online will mean far more to learner and parent than being told they are working at a 4b. Time will tell.

We have been carefully constructing the learning objectives / learning outcomes for the badges and learners have been collating their evidence towards these using Realsmart rPassports. They're being awarded on Edmodo for now, eventually we hope to use the full Mozilla Open Badges framework.

To give you a feel for these here's one objective from the Living Online badge:

I can use social networks safely because I have:

reviewed the security and safety settings of my social networks

analysed my contacts and ensured that they are appropriate and can see only what I want them to

discussed the potential dangers of social networking, highlighting typical signs of danger

described how to report suspicious or abusive behaviour that I might encounter online

chosen the right social network for the right communications and interactions

Please feel free to see more detail on our wiki and feel free to offer your comments here. It's very much a work in progress, we've got a framework in the background and are trying to keep a half term ahead of ourselves throughout the year.

It's interesting to note that since this whole adventure started with Mr Gove's original invitation to ICT teachers to embrace this new found freedom, he has since decided to retract that and come up with a new program of study, as far as I can tell behind closed doors from the very educators he encouraged to take up the mantle. Hopefully it will bear much resemblance to what we're doing here. If not we'll probably carry on with what we feel is right any way.

So far it's been a really enjoyable start to the year. Staff have been enjoying teaching relevant skills and literacies to the students and they are getting the hang of badges. As we start awarding the first badges over the next week or so I am confident it's going to really take off. I'm also really positive that when we get onto the likes of Digital Presentation we're going to start seeing students using lots of evidence from other subjects to support their badges. I hope that this in turn becomes a nice guide to staff in other departments as to the actual ICT skills of our learners. With my Maths teacher head on I think it would be great to be able to look at a glance at the specific skills of my class and know in advance if they have experience of managing data or doing basic programming. Historically other teachers wouldn't really have a clue as to the ICT skills of a student, making integrating ICT in other subjects more difficult.

XKCD - A History Of The United States Congress.

The title sounds like a nasty affliction - but I actually want to describe a great lesson!

I was looking for a nice challenge for my Year 9 Computing class to continue developing their understanding of variables, if statements and loops - ideally moving on to nested statements and loops.

As ever Twitter came to the rescue when politely asked.

FizzBuzz was a great idea, having already built a program myself this year on Codecademy I knew it could step nicely through the required skills and work fine in Scratch.

I decided to break this into 4 challenges so that I could scaffold the learning a little for the group, their challenge was to :

Build a program that asked for an input number and then either repeated the number or said 'Fizz' if it was a multiple of 3.

Extend so that multiples of 5 reply 'Buzz'.

Extend so that multiples of 3 and 5 return 'FizzBuzz!'

Change program so that rather than returning just one value it counts up from 1 to a user inputted number.

This turned out to work really well - particularly part 3. Students tended to duplicate code and check sequentially for the different multiples. Meaning that an entry of 15 would often output all three responses. When I pushed students to adapt their program to return just 'FizzBuzz' in this case they began to think in depth about how their If then Else statements worked and to experiment with nesting the statements. Finally part for introduced loops to their previous work.

By then end students had a great understanding of how and why you would nest statements and a much better idea of when a program would cease based on a True If statement and when it would continue.

Here's an example of a finished Scratch program: