Wednesday, March 14, 2012

#naace 2012

I attended NAACE conference with one thing to do, to find out how organised naace were in offering an alternative ICT curriculum for English schools. If you have been following announcements then you should know that from September 2012 the  ICT curriculum in English schools has been suspended at the moment for two years.  There is now no obligation to follow national curriculum.

    There had been much talk of new curriculums , of wikification , of stakeholder engagement of lots of things really and there  does seem to be lots of things going on. NAACE once were really the association for local authority ICT Advisors now attendees span a broader church of primary and secondary teachers  So what were the messages ?


  1.    Ofstead are relaxed that there will be lot of ways to drive up standards.
  2.   In theory individual  schools could  now make their own standards in this space
  3.   This is about national curriculum redesign not about qualifications design but what may emerge are new awards 
  4.   Some schools have already made big changes to their curriculum  they will be showcased .
  5.   Dfe giving Naace control of ICT mark and self review framework now official was previously BECTA  
  6.   Awarding bodies and industry subject associations arr encouraged  to develop creative solutions  Some arriving already  examples of innovative programmes  Computing at school Behind the Screen Apps for Good AQA and edexcel new gcse proposals in computer science  
  7.  You need to follow your own curriculum but flavours also arriving from NAACE , BCS , e-skills  , cas , you choose 
 Overall the focus is on programming and creating and the academically challenging bits  Computer science should be in everyone's minds.  But digital literacy and using ICT across the curriculum is still important.

 Is this the deregulation or the  derailing of national curriculum jury is out.

 I think NAACE should do more to take ownership of curriculum in this space while they have this opportunity I hope they do more to promoted their level 1 , 2 and 3 Curriculum. I think folks will get a bit confused about new GCSE that will appear in between now and September,

 Big shout out to Derek Robertson and John Johnston who picked up awards for conolarium and for growing teach meet community respectively.