ICT Teachers Are Rubbish!

Ofsted have reported this week that "the teaching of information and communications technology is inadequate in a fifth of school", with Schools minister Nick Gibb claiming that ICT teaching was "far too patchy".

Here's the article: Click Here!

The article says that last year, out of 74 schools inspected, 14 showed inadequate teaching of ICT. Now you are welcome to accuse me of splitting hairs at this point, but I kind of presumed that the country had more than 74 schools, and actually 14 out of 74 is just under 19%, rather than the 20% quoted. The trouble is that I just sound like a politician, spewing numbers out for no apparent reason, but it does seem a little sweeping to me.

What the article doesn't mention is that there is a chronic shortage of ICT teachers in the marketplace, or should I say, there is a chronic shortage of "decent" ICT teachers in the marketplace. The school I teach at held interviews for a new head of ICT and didn't appoint any of the four candidates for lack of quality, and all these people were experienced practitioners. The post had to be readvertised, and we did get someone second time around.

There's also the fact that the ICT curriculum, written by the government isn't very good. Having taught ICT I know this from first hand experience. The tasks are woefully thought out and totally uninspiring, which means that young people aren't enthused enough to carry the subject on further.

ICT isn't the only subject, with mathematics being another problem area to staff. I have known of collegaues of mine say to senior management who were on their case "Feel free to get rid of me, but good luck replacing me with anything as good or better". It may sound arrogant, but they almost certainly had a point.

Teaching, along with police, are seen as relatively safe jobs - there will always be children and criminals after all. People blindly stumble into teaching via a PCGE course expecting to turn up and be able to "knock 'em dead" from day one. This isn't the case, no matter how proficient you are in your subject, the skills involved in relaying that information to a bunch of teenagers who can't be bothered have nothing to do with your aptitude for the subject.

And herein lies the problem with ICT - those who are good at it and have knowledge that could be passed on to youngsters aren't always the most out-going of people. Let's face it, people who are great at programming and databases tend to be geeks (not all of them!), and the same applies to maths. Teaching involves a personality that many of those apparent experts don't possess.

There's also the fact that if they are genuinely good at ICT (or maths) there's probably more money to be made outside of teaching, in an environment that doesn't involve actually talking to people very much. Trying to encourage these people to leave university with a first class degree and walk into teaching with a golden handshake and a shortened teacher training period is not the way forward, even though it sounds good to those who don't know, namely the general population who cast their vote, and the press.

Of course there are people who are good at ICT (and maths) and can deliver it, but they are few and far between, and often lured to academies who don't have the strict financial controls that a mainstream school has with regards teachers' wages.

And as we all know, almost all academies have become academies because the clientele aren't necessarily the most diligent, so you have the best teachers teaching those students who are highly unlikely to actually want to progress in the field.

It's the teachers' fault for being rubbish though, clearly.