The Office for Standards in Education has again criticised the New Opportunities Fund’s pound;230 million ICT training scheme, saying its overall effect remains “unsatisfactory”.
The Ofsted report found that in 60 per cent of secondary schools and 50 per cent of primaries, the training has so far failed to helped to improve the quality of ICT use in the classroom. In many secondaries, the programme has “simply ground to a halt”, often because training materials failed to excite teachers.
Ofsted said that despite the “poor overall picture”, there had been some improvements since its first report on the initiative. NOF had improved its publicity to schools, while providers had acted on recommendations from the quality assurance process run by the TTA.
Richard Hill, head of policy for NOF, pointed to these findings as evidence that the programme had improved, but conceded that “clearly there are some things we need to think about”.
Chris Johnston
www.ofsted.gov.uk
