UK govt officially decides to scrap boring school ICT lessons

[CHiLL]

After months of consultation, the UK government has decided to scrap the boring-snoring information and communication technology (ICT) curriculum.

There was a "broad consensus" that the existing curriculum was "not fit for purpose", according to the Department of Education.

 

Schools still need to teach ICT at key stages, but are now unshackled - "teachers will have the flexibility to decide what is best for their pupils without central Government prescription".

 

We now enter a period of public consultation on a draft of the regulations that will change everything. The closing date for this is 11th July.

 

The consultation - "Regulations for removing the duty on maintained schools to follow the Information and communication technology (ICT) National Curriculum Programmes of Study, Attainment Targets and statutory assessment arrangements" - can be found online.

"Great news announced today by Gov to scrap the ICT curric so schools will be free to teach Computer Science from Sept," tweeted Ian Livingstone in response to the news. He's been an integral part of the campaign, and an advisor to Education Secretary Michael Gove.

ICT lessons going bye-bye is one of two reasons why the UK video game industry should be excited. The other, the Raspberry Pi - a dirt-cheap and tiny PC engineered to encourage grass-roots programming in the same way the home computers of yesteryear did.

 

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-11-uk-govt-officially-decides-to-scrap-boring-school-ict-lessons

 

Well, this is going to make my life in ICT Support a hell of a lot worse. Teachers given control...God help us.

[Marc]

I can honestly say I like the way my daughters school teaches with regards to IT. She is currently doing the mandatory ICT, however is also doing graphic design and some basic programming. This is the kinda thing they should be teaching in school whilst people are still young and retain this kinda stuff. I sure wish I was taught that kinda stuff at school

[CHiLL]

I can honestly say I like the way my daughters school teaches with regards to IT. She is currently doing the mandatory ICT, however is also doing graphic design and some basic programming. This is the kinda thing they should be teaching in school whilst people are still young and retain this kinda stuff. I sure wish I was taught that kinda stuff at school

That's a complete contrast to how our school do things. There's basically no programming until sixth form, and even then it's the most basic game-making type of thing. Most of our kids lessons, from what I've observed walking through the classes appears to be around how to use x application, how to write an email, etc.

[Victor Leigh]

I think this is a step backwards. In the right direction.

 

Teaching by numbers have never produced any good results. More so when it's a subject like IT. This is one field of study that's moving too fast for any committee to ever catch up, let alone get far ahead enough to plan for the future. So it has to be done on the local level.

 

Now to find teachers who know more about computers than the kids they are teaching.

[CHiLL]

I think this is a step backwards. In the right direction.

 

Teaching by numbers have never produced any good results. More so when it's a subject like IT. This is one field of study that's moving too fast for any committee to ever catch up, let alone get far ahead enough to plan for the future. So it has to be done on the local level.

 

Now to find teachers who know more about computers than the kids they are teaching.

I would have to disagree.

 

I deal with ICT teachers every day, and if they had their way, the kids wouldn't learn anything useful. Mainly because the teachers will design the year/course/module based on what is easier for them, rather than what is useful.

[Thomas]

My brother is currently doing the ECDL and my god it is a pile of pants. It's just long morning interactive step by step guide for how to use basic Microsoft Products and Windows. Telling you 'Click Save; and then testing you on it. Rubish. Complete rubbish.

 

Currently my ICT course is a load of pants. It has every subject related to programming turned into game making, 1 actual unit called Game Making, Image Manipulation was... you goes it! How a game would look like. In my 2 Web Units both have only mentioned w3.org 1^st which is appalling and nether have gone into any more detail then creating a web form that launches your own mail client. A few units have helped me. One was a real in-depth study on how business use ICT (plus it got us a trip to Disney to look into the computer systems. All in all though it is a really easy underfunded pile of pants that should count as a qualification.

 

And finally I also had to do something called Functional Skills ICT (long story short people through GCSEs didn't work for people going into work. People got As in english but didn't know how to write a report. People got As in Maths but didn't know how to deal with an Order... same with ICT) and the documents they gave us were things so easy that I am sure I could teach my mother to do it in a few hours and she can barely work her computer.

 

ICT Teaching is quite frankly a mess in the UK and needs not only an overhaul in fun but an overhaul of what they are going to teach the. Yay they can make a Database, but would that Database be used in real life? Would that SpreadSheet be used in a real workplace?

[Marc]

That's a complete contrast to how our school do things. There's basically no programming until sixth form, and even then it's the most basic game-making type of thing. Most of our kids lessons, from what I've observed walking through the classes appears to be around how to use x application, how to write an email, etc.

 

You need to move over manchester way

[CHiLL]

You need to move over manchester way

It'd probably be better than living in Huyton!

 

Although, the point in my post is the same across the country, affecting all schools/teachers.

[Marc]

It'd probably be better than living in Huyton!

 

Although, the point in my post is the same across the country, affecting all schools/teachers.

 

Sorry to hear that. They not replacing it with anything which you can benifit from?

[CHiLL]

Sorry to hear that. They not replacing it with anything which you can benifit from?

Not from a technical support point of view. Teachers who think they know best, budget cuts, job losses and now this. Woo...

[SpikeTheLobster]

Currently my ICT course is a load of pants. It has every subject related to programming turned into game making, 1 actual unit called Game Making, Image Manipulation was... you goes it! How a game would look like.

 

This is presumably some office-bound bean counter deciding that kids are only interested in games and, therefore, it would be the best way to teach them things.

 

In my 2 Web Units both have only mentioned w3.org 1^st which is appalling and nether have gone into any more detail then creating a web form that launches your own mail client. A few units have helped me. One was a real in-depth study on how business use ICT (plus it got us a trip to Disney to look into the computer systems. All in all though it is a really easy underfunded pile of pants that should count as a qualification.

 

The Web didn't exist (as such) when I was learning IT, so we didn't have that.

 

And finally I also had to do something called Functional Skills ICT (long story short people through GCSEs didn't work for people going into work. People got As in english but didn't know how to write a report. People got As in Maths but didn't know how to deal with an Order... same with ICT) and the documents they gave us were things so easy that I am sure I could teach my mother to do it in a few hours and she can barely work her computer.

 

I think the same could be said of most GCSEs: the standards have fallen drastically since I took exams (which were the old O-levels). I remember my entire class being asked to take the physics GCSE when we'd just started the A-level (so the class was people who'd done alright in the O-level but not necessarily brilliantly) and every single person got an A* (or whatever the top mark is). The questions were ridiculously easy and a good third of them were general knowledge, not physics. Pathetic.

 

That said, education's a difficult thing. A lot of it is fundamental skills that, although they appear not to be useful in real life, are the groundwork for a ton of other stuff... and students don't see that. Ever. It's only much, much later on that you realise how useful all the boring crap is and how all the fun, interesting stuff is about as important to real life as an asthma inhaler is to Darth Vader.

 

Getting an A in English (language) doesn't mean you can write business reports - they're a specific style - but it should mean you have a good control of the language (amusingly enough, for a writer and editor, I only got a . Most businesses don't really care about that, to be honest, since they know they're going to have to train you in everything they do. They just want to see that you're not an imbecile.

 

ICT Teaching is quite frankly a mess in the UK and needs not only an overhaul in fun but an overhaul of what they are going to teach the. Yay they can make a Database, but would that Database be used in real life? Would that SpreadSheet be used in a real workplace?

 

You're missing the point with the database/spreadsheet thing. Nothing you build in a course would be used by a real business. That's not the point - the point is that you learn the skills needed to build any database or spreadsheet. For example, in my three years of IT at University, the single most useful course I took was database fundamentals. There was absolutely no practical work in it: it was all the basics of how DBs work, how queries work, how optimisation works and so on. Outside in the real world, that knowledge was totally brilliant: it meant I could do almost anything with a database and thus specialise if I wanted to.

[Marc]

This is presumably some office-bound bean counter deciding that kids are only interested in games and, therefore, it would be the best way to teach them things.

 

I think targeting what kids are interested in and trying to get the courses to fit that is actually a good way to go to be honest. The problem is that they do not teach the correct things, not that they dont have the correct way of teaching. I remember when I was at school myself being taught how to build a basic database in access, and also being taught how to use excel. At the time I was there though I dont think I was ever told that a spreadsheet is similar to a table within a database or even what the database was, just how to build one.

[SpikeTheLobster]

I think targeting what kids are interested in and trying to get the courses to fit that is actually a good way to go to be honest.

 

So do I. There is, unfortunately, one major failing... the total lack of comprehension of what kids enjoy. When was the last time an office-bound bean counter who's been on education boards for the last twenty years had a single clue what anyone other than grey-suited accountants do for fun?

[ridwan sameer]

Well ICT was never that boring for me.. SInce im a techie and whatnot

I usually knew more than what the teacher had to offer... So that pissed me off at times

[Marc]

So do I. There is, unfortunately, one major failing... the total lack of comprehension of what kids enjoy. When was the last time an office-bound bean counter who's been on education boards for the last twenty years had a single clue what anyone other than grey-suited accountants do for fun?

 

 

Grey suited accountants have fun these days? WOW Im out of touch LOL

[Victor Leigh]

Sure, grey-suited accountants also know how to have fun. They get immense pleasure from lining up those little figures on the balance sheet and they positively drool over sight of a perfectly sharpened pencil.

 

Seriously speaking, using committees to set a curriculum for IT is a still-born idea right from the word go.

 

First, you have to set up a committee. That may take anything from a few months to a whole year. Then the committee has to meet and meet and meet again until they come up with a curriculum which everyone can agree upon. That again would take anything from a few months to a whole year. All that while they will be working on the basis of a set of information which was gathered at the very beginning of the deliberation process. Which means that by the time they produce a curriculum, the curriculum is based on something that is at least one year old. Or more accurately, one year out of date.

 

That makes the curriculum totally irrelevant. And a wonderfully perfect waste of time and taxpayers' money.

[ridwan sameer]

Dont us Science Guys get some love?

Well of course not.. I hate Science too. Chemistry is the bane of my existence... I wish my parents agreed to send me to a graphic design institute

[SpikeTheLobster]

Dont us Science Guys get some love?

Well of course not.. I hate Science too. Chemistry is the bane of my existence... I wish my parents agreed to send me to a graphic design institute

 

Well, you see... that's the funny thing. I love science. I'm a total geek (despite being a writer, which is ostensibly an art) and my favourite subject was IT - I loved all the techie details of building tables, databases, moving pointers, calculating data locations in files and all that stuff. Absolutely loved it.

 

Of course, 99% of people thought it was boring. Such is life.

[ridwan sameer]

Well, you see... that's the funny thing. I love science. I'm a total geek (despite being a writer, which is ostensibly an art) and my favourite subject was IT - I loved all the techie details of building tables, databases, moving pointers, calculating data locations in files and all that stuff. Absolutely loved it.

 

Of course, 99% of people thought it was boring. Such is life.

Well we sail int he same boat (Except that im still studying )

I just hate chemistry.. I wish I would've done Computing Instead of Chemistry for my A/L's

[Marc]

Well we sail int he same boat (Except that im still studying )

I just hate chemistry.. I wish I would've done Computing Instead of Chemistry for my A/L's

 

See chemistry would be cool if it fit the stereotype of just test tubes and makin things bubble LOL