Just read through the Ofsted report ‘Meeting Technological Challenges’
Seems fair enough. They went to a bunch of schools over three years, 89 of them secondary schools, and have presented their findings. This article on the BBC sums it up pretty well, however I have my own views on what they said, here.
NAAIDT has a response up on their website, but his basically just recaps what Ofsted said. They’re going to wait until HMI give a talk at the annual conference in May.
So what do I have to say? I’d still like someone to tell me what smart materials are for.
Apart form that, I do tend to agree with the recommendations, it’s just that saying something, identifying it, is only one half of a soilution.
When Ofsted say that secondary schools should ‘make sure that D&T resources are up to date to reflect 21st-century technology, are used effectively and represent good value for money’, it makes sense – but what D&T teacher is currently sitting there plotting to introduce some more of those early twentieth-century cabinet-making manuals into their lessons?
Teaching design to the standard Ofsted has identified is a massive challenge, especially as ‘Schools generally had not made sufficient use of subject-specific training to enable teachers to continually refresh and develop their practice to teach the technologically challenging and more modern parts of the curriculum and to stay up to date with developments in research and innovation‘.
I love design, I love teaching design, but I have always found it the part of my job that students are least willing to meet me half-way. I’ve scoured the internet and trawled through books, i’ve attended CPD and shared resources, but there is still no straightforward way to engage students in design when, really, they are thinking ‘I just want to make something!’
Ofsted mention encouraging visitors, staff training and more electronics and systems & control. These things will all help, but in a way it’s the same old story – if there was the time and the money for these things, we’d already be doing them.
For instance, a couple of years ago I invited some students from the RCA’s Design Products course to do a bit of tutoring with my A-Level class. Everyone loved it, and all sides got a lot out of, not least me getting my students more motivated and involved.
But how long did it take me?! During that time, was I able to ‘provide a balanced D&T curriculum that is well pitched to build upon the primary curriculum and includes the technologically challenging and more modern parts of the subject so that students can apply their scientific understanding and develop greater technical rigour in designing and making‘ or ‘improve assessment so that learning activities, particularly in Years 7 to 9, are challenging and well matched to the needs of each student‘?
No! I wasn’t able to do that, because there is too much to do! It is very difficult for teachers to find a win-win situation, because focusing on one thing/trend/objective/group generally means missing out on another. Nightmare.
So, Ofsted, thank you for your report, I shall refer to it when I need to cite evidence of D&T teachers needing more budget spent on CPD, and time allocated for curriculum planning or increased capitation in order to buy super-exa-chroma-magna-electro-quark paint, or need to convince the site manager to sort out enough ventilation so that I can have more than one soldering iron going at any one time, but other than that – I already knew all of this!
