Becta’s Research films 2008
Using ICT to improve schools

Peter Rudd: New technologies definitely do have a large potential for involving people and engaging people and making things more democratic, if you like. I think they’re gonna’ make a significant contribution to what we call a critical citizen, who can use the technologies to register their opinions and to seek out thoughts on things.
Narrator: This year, Becta has decided to change the way we present and share the results of our commissioned research. To engage our key partners outside the world of Becta, we’re holding a series of seminars looking at the key themes we feel have current and significant importance.
Dame Enid Bibby: I feel there’s been too much emphasis on failure. I think what we need to look at is why some young people in the most challenging circumstances, in some of the most deprived communities do succeed against all the odds.
Tony Richardson: We know that low income is a strong predictor of low educational performance. That fact alone puts the whole challenge of how to improve schools and address social inequity into context. Here at Becta, we’ve commissioned research to establish how and how well ICT can be used to create a better and more accessible learning opportunity within our education system, despite and because of the challenges endemic in disadvantaged communities. 
Narrator: So let’s take a look at how one school has managed to turn round their prospects to create a culture of achievement and ambition. 
Chris Hill: When I arrived, one of the first trawls through that I did was to discover that a quarter of the teaching was inadequate and in the end of that year, we received a notice to improve for standards, quite rightly, they weren’t good enough. However, we came out of notice to improve very quickly and so part of the thinking around improving the quality of teaching was to look at the way in which the students prefer to learn and so as a school we’ve invested a huge amount in improving the provision in terms of ICT.
What technology’s enabled us to do is to encourage our students to research independently, produce independent outcomes to their learning through all digital mediums, through cameras, through using everything that you can do on a PC, in order to prove and to demonstrate their learning in a range of ways that is more engaging to them as young people. I mean, we ban mobile phones, right? And there came a sort of critical point where we then had to say, “Well actually we can’t ban mobile phones 'cause that’s a very useful learning tool”, so students can demonstrate their learning, can share their learning in all sorts of different ways. 
Pam Crossley: We always try and put an element of ICT in, in our planning, but you’ll find that the pupils will often suggest things that you have never heard of like our theme on music and me, they brought their own music in, we had the visualisations going on, the interactive white board and then they sort of looked at emotions through the colours and things and it takes it to a different level, a more abstract level that they can cope with.
Schoolgirl: I think the technology in school’s a lot better because you kind of relate to it a lot more 'cause you can kind of look at it and go, “Oh right, ok, whatever”, and then it’s not like reading or staring at a board or whatever when the teacher’s writing it down. It’s a lot more fun.
Pam Crossley: With Phillipa’s particular piece of work on music and me, she’s had to look at not just using her art skills like drawing, painting, but also it’s all to do with knowledge and understanding and independent work.
Schoolgirl: Now I can…I don't know, it’s just kind of brought it onto me, 'cause I want to go into teaching or something so it’s kind of, I know what I’m going to do and I can kind of see how things are gonna come together.
Pam Crossley: It’s a real confidence building tool and it is very motivational because they’re used to it, you know, and it is the ICT that actually moves them on that way.
Chris Hill: The technology faculty itself achieved very, very high results and actually the technology helps them to deliver that which is in their head which otherwise, you know, it gets a real frustration if you can’t deliver what you see.
Schoolboy: I used to prefer drawing my ideas up because I wasn’t really familiar with the Pro Desktop but when I started getting it, I found it ea…I picked it up very easily and started to design a lot more things on it.
Chris Hill: Over the time that I’ve been here, we’ve been able to construct structures and systems within the school that allows us to collect assessment data on a regular basis, analyse it and turn it round so that it becomes information and not just data. 
Almost at a touch of a button, I can pick up a profile of a student. I know what they did at Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, I know what they are projected perhaps to get at Key Stage 3. I know what their current assessment is, so you can log all those behaviour management issues all the times that students have been exited from a class or the good things that they’ve done and it gives you a good whole picture of a child rather than a skewed anecdote that you might get within the school day.
It’s helped us really target students who perhaps just come into school, they do everything that’s asked of them but no more and they slide gracefully to a very mediocre, you know, assessments and attainment when they could’ve been a lot better. 

Narrator: The use of ict to manage behaviour and monitor attendance differed significantly between primaries and secondaries, with secondaries being more than twice as likely to consider ICT interventions as useful and effective.
Most headteachers agree that ICT have played a key role in recent school improvement. 
But they agreed more strongly that it would play a central role in future school development.
Digital technology hit home before it hit school in any impactful way. 
It’s everywhere. It’s in our living rooms, our cars, in our pockets, and young people, as always, mastered the art of its use and flexibility long before their teachers did.
Tony Richardson: Now, ICT can help to oil the wheels of pupil motivation and achievement and it can help to identify and diagnose areas for concern but at the end of the day, it’s the people. It’s the educators, the parents and the learners who will make a difference.
Lyndsey Grant: Rather than involving students in having to fit into the school model, I think the question we need to be asking is how the school model can adapt to include the diverse experience, background, skills and competencies that are going on outside the school. 
Narrator: By commissioning research and holding seminars like this, Becta is supporting the hard work of all professionals who want better opportunities for learners.