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Section 3 Planning and Managing ICT 3.1 Planning and managing The central principles of the 5-14 programme are balance, breadth, coherence, continuity and progression. In planning and managing ICT, schools should ensure that pupils are provided with: broad and balanced learning opportunities within ICT skills and applications across the 5-14          curriculum coherent links and connections continuous pathways for learning progressive development of understanding, skills and informed attitudes in relation to ICT. Planning for ICT in schools can usefully be viewed as operating on two parallel tracks. Necessary longer-term strategic/development planning will take place at authority and school management levels and be developed across stages, departments and within clusters of associated schools. Alongside this there is also the classroom teachers' short-term planning that draws on the strategic overview for specific ICT activities, units of work or topics. Schools work in partnership with their local authority, which has the responsibility to ensure ICT provision including resources, training and support, and to policies and practices dealing with a range of issues such as safe uses of the internet. In meeting these requirements, local authorities have adopted differing models of ICT service provision, including services direct to schools or supplying managed services in partnership with an external provider. In the Guide for Teachers and Managers, more detailed advice is given. This includes commentary appropriate to local authorities, followed by advice on whole-school and individual classroom issues. Management responsibilities at these three levels have distinctive features but also a number of common elements. Provision of effective implementation strategies and leadership, including thorough planning and the          definition of the roles and responsibilities of all involved. Definition of the place of ICT within the existing curriculum, including the expectations of attainment, the          quality of learning and teaching sought and the importance of continuity and progression, assessment          and monitoring. Review of resources including staffing, provision of hardware and software, accommodation and          infrastructure needs. Audit of staff development needs and planning an appropriate programme. Setting clear expectations of pupil attainment, and establishing strategies for monitoring and          evaluating these. Communication with parents and the wider community to secure involvement and active partnership. 3.2 Managing assessment The permeation model for ICT 5-14 requires that schools have a clear policy for coordinating ICT provision for pupils. Teachers need to know which aspects of ICT 5-14 they are to deliver at a particular stage and in a given curricular area, their responsibilities for assessment and how to record pupils' progress so that the information can usefully be used by others. Teachers need to plan for pupils' progressive development in ICT as well as the use of ICT in teaching and learning. Successful planning for the progressive development of ICT skills must ensure that time is found to: teach new concepts and skills practise and reinforce concepts and skills meet individuals' developmental needs assess progress and attainment in ICT. To plan successfully for the use of ICT in learning and teaching, teachers need to know the prior learning that can be assumed within a class, group or individual pupil. Issues of assessment in the progressive development of pupils' skills are also discussed in Section 4 of this document, in the Guide for Teachers and Managers and in other documents to be published nationally. [RETURN TO 5-14 ONLINE] [BACK] [INDEX] [NEXT] © The 5-14 Curriculum (Scotland) Guidelines were produced by the Scottish Executive and Learning and Teaching Scotland and are reproduced with permission from the Queen's Printer for Scotland.