Gove's latest - computer programming for all...

absolutely. us schools that have an intake that has struggled in primary get kicked around by all of them. I think it is going to become more and more difficult to recruit heads for such schools. They have to keep on bouncing back, for instance when you meet your target only to find it has been moved. ANd then moved again. You need extraordinary leadership, great teachers and lots of energy on everyone's part to keep moving forward.
Gove is rapidly eroding the role of school governors.
He seems to be in the game of setting such schools up for failure - the possible outcome is that in a couple of years he will start taking them off academy sponsors and giving them over to big private companies to run. And that will really make a difference to standards and help the recruitment of heads no doubt.

I can't be the only person on GN who wishes to goodness that politicians would shut up about schooling. Them and their half baked ideas!

I think, boaz, that Gove is suggesting that programming should be one option at Key Stage 4. I don't really think that schools are likely to abandon ICT across the curriculum for Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 and as I read it, he hasn't suggested that they should. There does seem to be a suggestion that the programmes of study will be left to schools to decide. The big problem has always been about getting the teachers for the Key Stage 4 curriculum.

Yes, the binary system is based on using only 1's and 0's. Electrically this is represented by on and off. For example 1 might be 6 volts and 0 would be zero volts. Digital computers use only binary and any instructions to the computer must be in binary form. A set of instructions written in binary is known as machine code. To make programming easier computer programmes are written in a high level language. The high level program is then converted to machine code by a computer using a program known as a 'compiler'. Does this help?

Does anyone remember being taught the binary system? Pre-computer programming being taught by a long shot, but it was supposed to have some relevancy to how computers worked. It was, I'm afraid, all lost on me.

When I trained as a teacher (mid 1970's) it was considered a very good thing that the curriculum was not laid down by the government. Now that it is, Mr Gove is demonstrating by his suggestion that schools replace ICT with computer programming that we we right in our thinking in the 1970's. I have been involved with computers for over 30 years. In schools pupils should learn how to use computers. Computer programming, if offered in school at all, should be a specialism for those with a particular interest in the subject. For the majority of pupils, using the computer as a tool is far more important than learning programming. Did Mr Grove really suggest such a thing?

My close friend retired for the same reason - she has been a dedicated and successful teacher for over thirty five years and loved her children. She always went that extra mile, teaching whole classes of Asian children whose families had English mainly as a second language. Their families took her to their hearts and trusted her implicitly. A couple of years ago, she started getting anxious about SATS and worried every time Ofsted were due, and in the end she decided she had to put her health first - what a loss to education. She has taught three generations of families, and they were still coming to her to tell her that she had set them on the right path for adulthood, and remembered her as that special teacher who cared about them. On the day she left, there was a crowd of families wanting to wish her luck and say goodbye and thankyou. What a fabulous way to end your career, except that the federated head was very uncomfortable about her presence in the school because she had been on sick leave due to stress, and might have said something about the effect of unreasonable targets to the parents. Hopefully, someone will get the balance right one day - an inspirational teacher works wonders.

When I retired as Chair of Governors of a primary school, a long-serving and well loved and respected teacher (of year 6) took early-ish retirement. She told me that she loved the children, she loved the teaching, but not having to teach for SATS. So sad that a very competent and dedicated teacher felt she didn't want to go on because of the rigid curriculum and the need to 'get results'.

Supply teachers used to teach mamie - it is quite hard to find ones that do this.
Hi booboo you sound fed up. Round here all the advisers were made redundant a year or so back in the cuts.

Common sense prevails not in the education system. I have been teaching for 30 years and find most government initiatives ridiculous. Teachers should be trusted. The curriculum should be more flexible and tax payer's money should stop being wasted on daft initiatives which are usually driven home by advisors and other 'experts' that apparently care so much about education that they would rather support all this nonsense that actually take on the hard task of teaching. This latest one will no doubt find many supporters who will fast track their careers out of the classroom.

I seem to remember supply teachers always got inspected, Jess. I think unannounced inspections are a good thing, though I agree it is difficult for governors to get there.

And for his next trick.... unannounced OFSTED inspections, all of them, from September. A good thing in some ways (I have heard of schools borrowing a few outstanding teachers from other schools for the 2 days of the inspection!) but governors are supposed to drop everything and present themselves to be grilled at a few hours notice.
Ofsteds in future will include supply teachers as well apparently...

I think pretty much any subject is only as well taught as the people who teach it!
I am not sure about teachers buying into reforms before they are implemented though - I don't think we would ever have got ICT off the ground that way. I remember people saying I will never, ever need to use the internet....

Here we go again! Computer programming for GCSE as for A level will only be as good as those who teach it. I wonder what Mr G's computer skills are like???

While I was a school governor, we had eleven secretaries of state for education in about 21 years, from Baker to Balls and encompassing so many so-called 'reforms' that the teaching staff were practically flattened by all the paper coming into their offices. In that time I also had a spell as Chair of the Education Committee of a Met Borough which was quite a thorny position. Going to conferences was interesting because there was so much informed opposition to change for the sake of change. Both politicians and officers were able to offer constructive criticism but sadly this was usually ignored!

Good points JessM. In probation we had many secretaries of state and the most memorable for me was Charles Clark, who was constantly berated by the prime minister, to the extent that Clark would metaphorically kick the cat every time he got it in the neck, so we always knew he'd been in trouble.

On one very memorable occasion, he summoned every probation middle manager in the country to Westminster and no-one was exempt if they were not already on pre-arranged leave. We all trooped off, having been warned beforehand by the CEOs that he was going to kick our butts because probation doesn't work. When we got there, after a strange day during which we were stranded in Westminster with nothing to eat (food ran out!), Clark appeared on stage and told us what a fine job we were doing. We were totally puzzled and trooped back home. What a costly, pointless exercise.

A couple of days later he resigned!

Tinker tinker tinker and the more headline grabbing the better. Under the last govt I lived through: Morris, Blunkett, Clark, Kelly and Balls. Balls was the only secretary of state to last longer than a year. His main innovation seemed to be to spend huge amounts of money on a giant rainbow graphic for the department that must have cost a lot of money. Every new document had it's own full colour extravaganza rainbow pic. But the others all lasted about a year - they moved so fast that things they said they were going to do never got a chance to happen before the next one overturned it.
Now we have Gove, who, accidents apart will probably be with us for 5 years.
Oh gloom! Not sure which is worse - I think the system is to blame.
My recipe for cutting government expenditure and reducing waste:
1. restrict the amount of legislative time to about 10 weeks a year. So they would only introduce new laws that were really really needed, instead of every minister coming up with their own legislative programme as a matter of routine
2. restrict the number of initiatives and re-organisations.
In fact make the job of minister and the job of Mp part time. You could then reduce the number of whitehall jobs and consultancies drastically.

Hi Madpotter, I have worked with the management of change before retirement, and saw the highest number of changes to Criminal Justice legislation and practice ever known. Some new initiatives that were highly resourced sank without trace, others with little resourcing developed out of all proprtion and still exist today, and even more were resourced fairly well and one could not predict their success or not. It all depends on whether the people on the ground believe in what they are doing, and can motivate others to carry it through.

I watched a colleague manage a highly contentious programme for offenders that was imposed on every office from on high, with a high profile launch, recruitment of new staff to run it, and far too many open days with promotional materials and free pens, free meals, all day conferences to share the 'vision' and so on. The programme ran despite protests from experienced officers who could see what was lacking (the newly recruited staff didn't hve a clue about work with offenders and how to inspire them to believe their lives could be different), but it was ignored. After two years, the programme managers presented their findings at yet another conference. What they didn't show was how many reoffended, were reconvicted, and whether their offending had reduced, did it have an effect on crime reduction in that area. There were only 15 completers to that programme, despite nearly a hundred starting it. What a complete waste of money and effort. It folded without anyone at the top saying a word, and no lessons were learned, because within weeks they were starting yet another misunderstood programme.

What every good professional knows is that, if you don't get the relationship right between workers and clients, teachers and children, doctors and patients, your attempts to impose change on them will flounder. If the government doesn't give space for teachers to be able to work productively with their children, instead of having to jump through hoops the whole time, how can we expect anything to work?

Like Marnie, I too was an LEA adviser/inspector in a previous life when curriculum innovation was continuous and unrelenting. I did a research degree (at the same time as a full time job) and spent many years doing school-based research with teachers trying to evaluate the effects on schools of Government imposed change. It may sound simplistic, but it's not just about the things successive Governments want to change, or even why they want change, that makes change viable. Teachers need to feel that the changes make sense and are worthwhile before they commit to them - and how often does that figure large in Government thinking? Why does so much curriculum innovation fail - and then need changing? I still see a continuing cycle of the imposition of change without any real understanding of what makes it work - and what doesn't! It's easier to come up with instant initiatives that polish a new Government's image and give the illusion that they know what they are doing.

Thanks Jess - to be honest I am amazed by how little things have moved on since I retired (not claiming cause and effect though!). Yes of course programming languages go out of date, but the skills as you say are transferable; Logo on the BBC computer was great training for programming, logic, shape and space. I think this is where some people don't "get it". It isn't about teaching narrow ICT skills any more than you can teach spelling and grammar out of context. You have to learn, understand and then apply. Imagine learning to drive without any practical application...

Mamie we should put you in charge - my only concern is that some of our staff are reluctant to use computers themselves...
I'm not sure about the programming going out of date - I have certainly heard this criticism of the OU computing courses.
But the principles of programming are good training for thinking clearly. You have to analyse and break things down into clear and logical steps.

Anything to do with computers and, I would imagine, especially programming, is going to be out of date so quickly - long before our primary children reach "the workplace". And what on earth are we as a society going to do with a workforce of programmers with no other skills to mention?
How about producing young people who are literate and numerate as a bit of a novelty?? I think I'm with Charlotta on this one.

PS
I love the idea of "just desserts" - no soup or mains, "just dessert(s)" How often have I said that! Mine's crumble and custard, please!

I think ICT in the primary curriculum is a wonderful thing that teaches children all sorts of skills and enhances the teaching of literacy, numeracy and subjects across the curriculum. So we will never agree there Charlotta, but it was my life's work for the last twenty years of my career so I may be just a little bit biased.
I would deliver ICT at Key Stage 3 (11-14) across the curriculum -for example, word processing and social media in English and other arts subjects, spreadsheets in maths, science and geography, painting and design software in art etc etc
At GCSE I would go for more challenging courses allowing all sorts of different specialist study, delivered by digital media, skype included.
But then I have retired and I am a bit glad that I am not spending this week at that very exhausing BETT exhibition in London...

I agree Carlotta - if you have a degree in computer programming you are unlikely to want to teach. Unless you got a very low grade perhaps and can't get a job in IT...

Let's face it, most children of ten or even less can teach their parents and probably their teachers a thing or two about using computers. Don't hold with computers in primary schools, Charlotta? That boat has sailed long ago.