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Learning and teaching

The organisation of teaching 

For Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 pupils, all schools need to provide:

  • sufficient, regular teaching time for the teaching of ICT skills, knowledge and understanding, and for access by pupils to appropriate ICT tools
  • planned opportunities for pupils to use and apply their ICT capability as part of their learning in other subjects of the curriculum
  • additional support for pupils who have made slow progress, are less able or are falling behind, to get them back on track.

The use of ICT in other subjects can provide rich contexts for learning with and about ICT, and can enhance pupils' experience of the wider applications of ICT and give valuable practice in their use. Addressing all the important aspects of a particular area of ICT, such as communication (for example: audience and purpose in sharing information through desktop publishing), when the focus of study is another subject with its own learning and teaching objectives and assessment agenda, may be challenging.

When considering the use of ICT in other subjects, it is important to distinguish between examples that require a level of ICT capability in line with pupils' current ICT capability, and examples when, for instance, the purpose is only to use digital resources to enhance subject learning (for example: simply navigating a website), requiring much lower levels of ICT capability.

To ensure rigour and progression in the development of pupils' ICT capability, schools need to provide time for discrete ICT lessons taught by specialist teachers of ICT. Such discrete lessons allow:

  • teachers to plan from the learning objectives in sufficient breadth and depth, structuring schemes of work and lessons in ways that ensure good progression across the key stage
  • teachers to use contexts from or work started in other subjects to help pupils to appreciate the relevance of their ICT work
  • pupils to gain some transferable skills, knowledge and understanding in readiness for application in other subjects.

Resources

Pedagogy and practice: teaching and learning in secondary schools; unit 1: structuring learning
Materials for teaching ICT capability at and below level 3 – guide for senior leaders and subject leaders (197.25 KB)