Embedding ICT in the Primary Curriculum

Some of us remember how IT, as it then was, got treated when the topic based, more creative curriculum was the order of the day: generally it was subsumed or ignored. This was kind of built into the system and fitted in well with the reality in schools. Most primary schools had only a handful of computers and fewer staff able or willing to use them. Many remained boxed in store rooms having been bought in by the LEA. They were shared out on a rota basis in the best organised schools. When the National curriculum was published and teaching IT became a requirement it was a guaranteed certainty that no school had enough equipment or expertise to deliver even part of it. The NC continued slowly to emerge chrysalis-like (ie not looking like anything involved in its conception) with a separate IT curriculum and a bewildering array of cross curricular links ‘embedded’ in the various other subjects; bewildering because the same objective could appear in different subjects accorded different levels of attainment. Data handling was a case in point, with the same skills and content appearing in History, Geography, DT, Science and Mathematics in addition to IT.

The first NC was so bloated it was impossible to fit into any school’s curriculum and it made sense to try and incorporate identical or similar objectives into cross-curricular schemes of work. Then came the onslaught of discrete subject teaching virtually required by the new inspection frameworks wielded by OfSTED. This was however partially contradicted with IT, soon to be re-branded ICT, because each subject area had IT requirements built in. The attempt by the QCA itself to include ICT into its schemes of work for other subjects can make quite funny reading. A typical example: “D+T Sandwich Snacks: create a database to store information from a survey of children’s favourite fillings”; as if any teacher in their right mind would take a couple of hours from an already overstuffed timetable to design a database, teach their children to enter data and use search and graphing tools to achieve the same as they would get by asking for a show of hands and knocking up a chart in Excel or a graphing app. As to whether most teachers would have the skills or interest in doing such a thing? the question requires no answer. Curriculum 2000 made none of this any better.

The new Primary Frameworks have proved even more impenetrable. It was trumpeted that ICT would be embedded at every stage in the new Literacy framework, what a joke! The vast majority of ICT references are to presentation skills (typing up to you and me), although typing skills are included up to Y3 – my enquiry from our Literacy coordinator as to when they intended to introduce typing practice into literacy lessons has not been answered and I’m not holding my breath. Realistically, I don’t really know where the time would come from. Other ‘embedding’ of ICT involved the exciting ‘multi-modal’ texts in Y1: sound files and graphics, taking digital photographs (well targeted ICT skills at work here, especially given that our nursery children are already doing this!) and of course reading ‘on screen’. Numeracy is even worse, the main use of ICT appears to be for teaching, relying heavily on the good old ITPs, some of which were coded in Latin.

The New Primary curriculum is of course only a spectre but if what must be one of the worst websites in a short education online history is anything to go by (and it may well not be) the further embedding of ICT and raising to the level of a ‘core’ subject – much trumpeted but not actually included anywhere I have come across yet - could prove to be illusory. All the areas of learning have an ICT Across the Curriculum link and Cross Curricular Learning tab with the rather bland children to develop and apply their literacy, numeracy and ICT skills statement in their Programme of Learning but that covers a multitude of omissions.
Typically teachers feel comfortable with word processing but nothing much beyond clipart, backgrounds, fonts and styles, few teach the use of tables, drawing tools, mail merge, forms etc. Whenever I see ‘Internet research’ on planning I shudder – it’s the modern day equivalent of the lazy ‘project work’ of yore and the more complex skills of advanced searching, checking plausibility or reliability, even downloading and filetype conversion tend to be neglected . PowerPoint is popular but it is used like a more flashy word processor and many features languish unused, unconsidered. Many teachers are happy to let their children loose on paint applications using basic tools but vector graphics is another matter. I have yet to meet a non-ICT enthusiast who uses spreadsheets for anything but producing flashy graphs. Most control and sensing software and hardware are regarded with trepidation. Databases? I don’t really need to go there.
Left to cross curricular integration in the curriculum, the majority of primary pupils would rarely progress beyond a low level of ICT attainment. The use of digital still or video cameras looks like an advance but will children be learning much more than the 5 year old in the Windows’ ads? will they be manipulating their photographs, editing their videos? or just dumping them into PowerPoint or Photostory and WM with an unedited soundtrack?

As ICT funding dries up over the next few years there may well be moves from deep within the bowels of LAs to silently shrink it. My own LA ICT team are very good generally but in the end they will toe the line and probably implement or manage the downgrading, rather than leading any opposition to it.