Case studies

Strengthening pedagogy with ICT: Early adopters' project - case study 5 - Kirklees

Background

Saiqa Liaqat, one of the school improvement consultants for ICT in Kirklees who supports the development of discrete and cross-curricular ICT writes:

The three most important things to come out of the project are:

• teachers are critically reflecting on their use of ICT in the classroom
• teachers are embracing technologies that they would have found threatening or too technical in the past
• activities are being planned to fully engage all pupils.

The Strengthening Pedagogy with ICT pack was introduced at a school leadership meeting, of six of the 26 high schools in Kirklees, on Assessment for Learning. The leadership team of Batley Girls' Visual Arts College saw the pack as an ideal opportunity to expand their work in using ICT as one of the tools to improve teaching and learning.

Batley Girls' Visual Arts College is an 11–18 high school with a predominantly minority ethnic student population. The school has not chosen ICT across the curriculum as a whole school initiative, yet has invested significant funds into hardware improvements and CPD for all staff.

Eight teachers from the English, mathematics and science departments developed their use of ICT as a tool for teaching and learning to raise standards.

At Batley Girls' the senior leadership team is firmly committed to the use of ICT in the classroom. The school has invested heavily in ICT hardware and staff CPD. A senior teacher with responsibility for pedagogy and teaching and learning believes ICT is a tool that can drive up standards. This belief, and the results seen from the classroom work done in the past, has made the school early adopters of the pack.