06 March 2009
By David Williams
Investment in information and communication technology education has brought only patchy improvements for pupils, an Ofsted report has found.
The school watchdog’s study of ICT teaching from 2005 to 2008, The importance of ICT, said schools were prioritising the subject after receiving £2bn worth of investment during the past decade. However, significant improvement in primary education has been less consistently matched in secondary schools.
Pupils in Key Stages Three and Four were described as good at presenting work and communicating ideas using ICT, but standards in the use of spreadsheets, databases and programming remained low.
Primary school standards rose throughout the survey period, but the brightest pupils of all ages were ‘insufficiently challenged’, the report said.
A fifth of secondary schools were failing to make sufficient provision for students who choose not to take an ICT qualification at GCSE level, despite it being a statutory requirement.
The numbers of sixth-form students taking ICT subjects was declining, having dropped by 45% among girls between 2004 and 2007, and by 31% for boys over the same period.
The report added that ICT assessment was inadequate in 20% of schools, and it was still rare for schools to measure pupils’ ability or track their progress.
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