Core Confusion

This irritant started for me in 2000: we were heading out of special measures and had endured LEA advisers crawling all over us for a couple of years. I was interviewed by a particularly unpleasant adviser who stated that the most recent report had deemed standards in ICT to be below national expectations. I hesitated for a moment but fairly confident that it had contained no such judgment retorted that it had not . She said it did. I said it didn’t…this continued for a bit. When I asked her to quote the relevant section she read out “Standards in the core subjects do not meet national expectations”. “Ah,” said I, with a small smile of satisfaction,” that’s where your problem comes from, ICT is a foundation subject!”. “No, it’s a core subject” replied she, “No, it’s foundation”, “No……..” this also continued for a bit. The interview eventually ground to a halt, after I had pointed out that as ICT Coordinator I would have thought someone would have told me.

I immediately went to check my copy of the National Curriculum 2000 and there, sure enough, was the proof, page 16. ‘Stupid woman’ thought I and gave the matter little more heed. Until a few months later, when I had the same discussion with an OFSTED inspector, a very experienced ex-HMI who commanded a great deal of respect in me but who said the same thing. She was however unable to tell me when it had been changed or by whom. It seemed it was one of those ‘givens’ everyone knew of but no-one knew why.
Outraged that the government had been tinkering with my curriculum area without telling me, I e-mailed OFSTED, BECTA (I think), the DFES, NC online and the QCA asking when and how the status of ICT had been changed. Reply came there none, despite re-sending all the mails. When my head told me it was a core subject I was finally certain it couldn’t possibly be.
A stand-up ding-dong with our LEA adviser followed a few weeks later when we met over a different matter and I raised the subject. He agreed that he couldn’t actually quote me chapter and verse on when or how the change was made but he was sure it had. He got back to me a week later trying to ‘explain the confusion’ (not his confusion, of course) but I had actually worked it out a while before.

The confusion had arisen because of the introduction of the Literacy Strategy in the late 90's. OFSTED announced that during the first year of its introduction, when schools would be struggling to embed the new way of teaching literacy, their teams would exercise greater flexibility (now called a lighter or softer touch) in their inspections of the Foundation subjects but would maintain full rigour for the Core subjects and ICT. Somehow these then remained inextricably linked in the minds of many highly paid people. In the ensuing years references to the core subjects and ICT just dropped the last 2 words and were understood to include ICT. When the lead inspector at our last OFSTED referred to ICT as “extended core” I nearly burst out laughing, my head looked daggers at me, I nearly burst out laughing all over again but the moment passed.

Whenever I have challenged an assertion that ICT is a core subject over the last 5 years I have run into brick walls of incredulity and misplaced certainty. What I find truly horrifying is that I, an ordinary primary classroom teacher, have had to correct people who train and inspect teachers and are paid twice as much as me for it!

One place where you would have thought I might find some respite or support is the TES staffroom forums but….. no. I found the same entrenched error, hotly defended, robustly, even arrogantly, asserted, and often backed up by references to irrelevant documents, websites or wrong advice. Here are a few:

ICT is now a core subject and subject as a result to SATS testing (although of course, SATS will shortly be abolished) and so if the school wants to keep its scores up, it will need to have the ICT result in there.

It's a core subject, it just hasn't got an examined SAT. You will see in your schools PANDA that it is reported alongside English, Maths and Science. That's my understanding anyway.
Call it what you want but ICT is a core subject, this has been confirmed to me by the se area Strategist.

English, Maths and science are core subjects. This means they are an necessary part of the curriculum. They are assessed, with results reported.
Page 8 of "Secondary National Strategy for school improvement 2005–06" (Ref: 1651-2005 DCL-EN) states:"Middle leaders in schools have a powerful influence on classroom practice and are gatekeepers to change and development. They are well placed to ensure that teachers draw on and use the Strategy to address the learning needs of their pupils. Termly development meetings for subject leaders in the core subjects (English, mathematics, science and ICT), and behaviour and attendance leaders, will provide a forum for local work, updating on national developments and sharing good practice.

It already is a core subject at both key stage 3 and key stage 4 - it is just that in some schools SMT appear not to know or do not want to know!

ICT is core at KS3 in our school but not at KS4

I asked this question of my LEA advisor and this seems to clarify the point rather well:At KS3 ICT is a core subject from 2008 when the test starts. At present most schools treat it as core because there are separate targets for ICT at the end of the KS as there are for Eng, Maths and Science.

It has been a Core Subject for about 3 - 4 years.

ICTs status as a core subject has also been confirmed by our LEA ICT advisors

This fits in with our OFSTED (Feb 2006). When the lead inspector asked to meet with the subject leaders of the core subjects, he included ICT in that.

The definitions of core and foundation were first published in the early days of the National Curriculum then repeated in Curriculum 2000.
ICT was then, and is still, a foundation subject:
http://www.nc.uk.net/nc_resources/html/ks1and2.shtml.
http://www.nc.uk.net/nc_resources/html/ks3and4.shtml
It will take an act of parliament or the use of a statutory instrument to change it. Many schools may treat ICT as a core subject in their timetabling and staff structure (TLR payments for coordinating ICT in some schools are the same as for core subjects for instance) but this does not affect its status as a National Curriculum subject.
I tried one more time to get an answer from the DFES (after at least 6 years!), this time asking only what the status of ICT is. The reply:

Dear ……
Thank you for your email of 15 February asking for clarification of whether ICT is a foundation subject or a core subject.

I can confirm that ICT is a foundation subject and statutory throughout all key stages of the National Curriculum.
Once again thank you for writing.
Regards
…….. Public Communications Unit

Case closed. On the question of whether it should be made a core subject however .......