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Government Proposals for ICT in School |
However, reading between the lines the proposal does not sound like such a good thing. What the government are actually proposing is to hand over control of ICT to the schools and IT industry, i.e. cut it loose from government control and influence. This will remove any blame from the government if things go wrong in the future! There are some merits to this, but the teaching will only be as good as the teacher delivering it. As a result, students up and down the country will be taught different things at different levels. Many schools will also look at the new exam paper and just deliver teaching based on that. This is due to start in September 2012. Will teachers be trained by then? Probably not! Training will also be offered at a great expense to the school - probably by the companies proposing these changes! The new curriculum is going to be based on what companies such as Google, IBM, Facebook etc think are important - he has also previously stated that he is not opposed to companies making a profit out of education! These companies are more interested in pound and dollar signs not exam marks so time will tell. Gove hopes that by making these changes Britain will create more programmers and computer animators. I have been involved in IT and have no interest in either programming or animation! If we are not careful, we could turn off more students than the current curriculum does. Both of these have a place and they should be taught, but a modular approach would be better. I would propose teaching smaller modules over the couse of two years looking at all aspects of ICT. Core modules could include:
What are your thoughts? The governments proposals can be found here 
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I have just read Michael Gove's Written Ministerial Statement on ICT in the National Curriculum and his speech to BETT (educational show). As an IT professional and former IT lecturer, I do agree that ICT needs to change.