ICT and workforce development
Changes in roles
Primary schools
The role of the technician has developed alongside the electronic systems and is so important that nearly all the ICT Test Bed primary schools are planning to continue to employ a technician when the funding ends.
Changes in the role of classroom/teaching assistants have also been striking. They have been trained in ICT skills alongside teaching staff, play a full part in supporting the pupils, and are significant in supporting supply teachers and new staff. As the new workforce agreement has been introduced, primary schools have experimented with new ways of using ICT to keep assessment records. There is a difference of opinion on interpretation of the agreement, but some teachers are entering assessment online while in other cases classroom assistants are taking some of this responsibility.
There has been a major change in the workload and status of primary school secretaries who are now often managing the MIS system, working closely with the headteacher. Training for implementing an MIS system is a complex and crucial procedure. In practice, primary schools have normally relied on one or two people, such as the headteacher and school secretary to learn how to use the system. Facilities that are only needed occasionally have proved time-consuming because their use has not been internalised, necessitating recourse to the instruction manual each time.
Secondary schools
ICT Test Bed enables both administration staff and teachers to do their jobs more effectively, being able to access data more readily and immediately. The new role of a technical support person, with dedicated responsibility for the classroom teaching and learning equipment, is a crucial factor in ensuring that the hardware is up and running.
Administrative staff have assumed increasing levels of responsibility during the last year, partly because of new responsibilities for the MIS system. They are often under considerable pressure.
Technicians have become increasingly important as schools become more ICT-dependent. Quick response to technical breakdown is crucial.
Behaviour management systems are seen as very important in secondary schools. In some schools, data is entered centrally from a paper-based memo system, though these procedures could be significantly improved by the use of email reporting. Agreement and understanding is needed of the terms used in behaviour management and schools should develop a simple protocol designed to capture potentially significant information at the time of the incident. The availability of behavioural records helps to coordinate action by different members of staff who might be involved at various stages of the procedures: pastoral heads of year, heads of department, headteachers and their deputies.
Assessment recording in secondary schools takes place at two level: the departmental level, where the head of department monitors the work in his/her department, and centrally, through a termly or half-termly battery of tests or assessments. This use of the MIS system is changing the nature of school-to-parent reporting so that it is becoming less verbal and more target and attainment oriented.
Where heads of year are able to access attendance data and events relating to individual students through the MIS system, this has helped them to co-ordinate more effectively with their departmental colleagues.
Further education colleges
Selection of the ICT Test Bed curriculum areas has changed the balance of ICT expertise in the colleges. Some curriculum areas participating in ICT Test Bed were previously untouched by ICT and now have tutors who are regarded as leaders in its curriculum use.
Inevitably, there has been some sense of inequity in areas that did not receive funding. To extend the impact of ICT Test Bed into other areas of the college, during or beyond the life of the project, will require a strong commitment from senior management.
ICT Test Bed has generally brought positive changes for MIS personnel who report new systems that work better and help them to be more efficient and effective. Marketing of courses has been helped by CDs or DVDs which are used for publicity purposes. All colleges report good and increasing student numbers in ICT Test Bed areas.
Technical support personnel and ICT resource managers are taking on new responsibilities and, in some cases, working more collaboratively with teaching staff.
All ICT Test Bed institutions
All the ICT Test Bed institutions are heavily engaged in responding to requests for advice and support from teachers and schools not involved in the project. This has given many staff a new leadership role in the profession.
Professional development
Primary schools
There is evidence of exceptional gains in the competence and confidence of the primary school teachers - and often teaching assistants and administrative staff/school secretaries - with ICT. A number of teachers commented that they are now less concerned when technical hitches and failure occur due to increased confidence in dealing with such issues. Professional development for staff in ICT Test Bed primary schools appears to have been very effective. Most have followed careful plans in its provision, usually collaborating with other schools in the cluster, with good support from the LEA and (to varying extents) from the FE college.
A reflection of this growing confidence and competence in the use of ICT was the children's evaluations of the improving quality of teacher support. In 2005 87% of Key Stage 2 respondents said that teachers were the best source of help in school when using ICT, compared to 65% in 2004.
Secondary schools
Despite variations in the uptake of ICT between departments, the immersion in ICT experienced by many teachers in ICT Test Bed secondary schools has led those who had not been early adopters of technology to develop (rapidly) a wide range of (often advanced) computer skills. Although the project made some formal training available, many such staff referred mostly to learning from informal support given by more technically able members of the department. In 2005, staff competencies peaked for using word processing and communication software such as the internet and email. Around three quarters of both teaching and support staff reported that their skills in word processing, internet use and email were sufficient for their own needs - and for teaching others. As in primary schools, the identification of particular members of departments with specific areas of ICT expertise proved very effective.
In the third year of the ICT Test Bed project a cross-cluster VLE was introduced in two clusters, but in some secondary schools staff have been reluctant to adopt the system, having developed their own ways of using more ad hoc electronic storage systems earlier in the project.
Training for implementing an MIS system is a complex and crucial element which takes some considerable time to implement even when the system installed is an upgrade of the existing systems. In ICT Test Bed secondary schools, training provided by different suppliers in two clusters has been ineffective and, in both cases, the LEA has proved to be a much better support mechanism. An important lesson is, therefore, that the LEA needs to be involved at an early stage in procurement and implementation decisions for MIS.
Further education colleges
In the FE colleges gains in teachers' competence and confidence with ICT, within the three specified ICT Test Bed courses, are in many cases as significant as in primary schools. Tutors express a sense of greater enjoyment in their work, perhaps springing from an increased sense of self-esteem and self-worth. Many use whole-class technologies regularly and are skilled in linking them to digital images and sound. There is evidence that they can overcome problems more easily because they normally teach students in half-day blocks. For example, logging laptops onto a wireless network, which is often a slow process, can be staggered over half an hour or longer.
Training in ICT skills has been systematic and successful in some of the ICT Test Bed curriculum areas in the colleges, but the most effective methods of learning have been seeing what colleagues are doing, taking part in team training sessions and practising with equipment personally owned or located in regular work areas.
All ICT Test Bed institutions
Uptake of ICT equipment depends on 'fit' with current practice and perceived needs
There is considerable evidence from the ICT Test Bed project that ICT equipment and systems become easily embedded in practice if there is a clear 'fit' between what they offer and perceived needs of teachers and leaders. When clear and easy fit is not evident, use is very unlikely to become established. However, good fit has the disadvantage that it encourages appropriation of the ICT equipment into current practice, so that changes that take full advantage of ICT will only happen slowly over time, and only if teachers continue to experiment with new approaches. Interactive whiteboards and visualisers/interactive slates are good examples of fit where many teachers and students embraced their use enthusiastically for whole-class teaching. The same applies to management information systems (MIS), especially in the three FE colleges which have a shifting student population and complex funding streams that necessitate meeting frequent demands for complex information from the Learning and Skills Council. In all three, MIS were upgraded with ICT Test Bed funding and are now being used very much more fully and effectively than previously. The same effect can be observed in the secondary schools, especially in one where the headteacher perceives the MIS to be of central importance.
The impact of action research on staff development and embedding change
The cross-case analysis of the action research reports clearly shows an impressive depth and sophistication of understanding of how teachers can use ICT to change the nature of teaching and learning. The analysis suggests that in this second year, when many teachers undertook their second study, there have been identifiable changes in teacher and student classroom relationships and changes in routine practices. There is no suggestion that other teachers may not have made similar changes, but through these teachers' investment in action research their achievements and professional development have been documented.