Richmond School
Policy | Policy List | Information Technology Policy
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY POLICY
RATIONALE (1)
ICT supports the delivery of all areas of the curriculum, providing a flexible tool to enhance learning, and assisting the process of enabling students to take responsibility for their own learning. As each year passes, more information becomes readily available for people to use in managing their working and domestic lives, and schools owe it to their students to prepare them to make the best of this information-based society.
AIMS (2)
Students should be taught to use ICT to facilitate their entitlement to the Sept 2000 national curriculum orders and principles of the Nationasl Grid For Learning (NGFL).
Students should be encouraged to appreciate both the versatility and the limitations of ICT.
Students should gain the confidence to explore the potential of ICT in support of their study, and should be in a position to be discerning as to which aspects of its use are of greatest benefit to them.
All students should have regular access to ICT experiences across all subject areas of the Curriculum.
Each subject area should have ICT activities planned into departmental schemes of work. This use of ICT should support, complement and reinforce those areas of study planned by each department, and should generate a new insight into those areas on the part of students.
All students should appreciate the relevance of using ICT in support of their study across all subject areas, and recognise the potential of ICT in supporting their study.
CURRICULUM (3)
An on-going programme of INSET, support and co-ordination will ensure that each department is in a position to cover the most appropriate aspects of the national curriculum, and provide an ICT entitlement to each student, at each Key Stage, as part of departmental schemes of work. Individual departmental coverage will contribute to the complete entitlement so that overall, the national curriculum for ICT is delivered.
Each student in year 7 will have fortnightly discrete IT lessons, in addition to cross-curricular experiences.
In years 8 - 11, each student will receive ICT tuition via individual curriculum areas, where the tuition will be designed to specifically support learning in that subject area. All lesson planning across all departments will be co-ordinated to ensure an equal access to ICT by all students. Each subject area will contribute to ICT aspects according to a co-ordinated and ‘mapped’ plan that is designed to ensure coverage and progression for all students.
In years 12 and 13, ICT is taught via an AVCE single award, and this will be supplemented in the near future by AS Computing. It is expected that the Key Skills ICT course will be discontinued.
ACCESS TO THE INTERNET BY STUDENTS (4)
The school’s internet service is provided by the NYCC via its broadband service. This is promoted as having in place a comprehensive filtering system designed to deny access to unsuitable web sites. Whilst such a system can never be fully effective, given the dynamic nature of the world wide web, we expect our provider to update this filtering system on a regular basis.
The school takes additional precautionary measures by blocking out specific sites using proprietary filtering systems. The technical responsibility for these systems lies with the IT manager.
All student use of the internet will be via lessons which are closely monitored by teaching staff, except in the case of sixth form students.
From year 9, all students will have access to a school-based email account. Policy as to its use with students is as follows :-
All students will be warned not to email staff unless invited to do so.
All students will be warned not to password swop, and to have theirs changed if they are in doubt about its secrecy.
All will be warned not to abuse their email - this includes sending unsolicited offensive or threatening mail to other students.
All will be told NOT to use email in IT lessons unless asked to do so.
All will be told that they lose their email if they do any of the above.
The system has enormous potential – it is the intention of the school that students are in a position to be able to email work home and send it in from home. Email consultations with staff bring many advantages, and offer advantages to staff when trying to feed back to or contact students.
Sixth form students will have independent access once a reply slip, signed by parents, has been returned to school. This slip must be counter-signed by a teacher, and signed by the student also as an indication that they adhere to the school’s policy on internet use. The following extract is that issued for staff to follow:-
Sixth form are now able to access the internet independently all day, but only after having returned a signed reply slip to the IT manager so that they can be ‘switched on’. The reply requires the signature of any member of staff to endorse the student’s application.
If this independent access is abused, then the IT manager will switch off that student’s access.
I would be grateful therefore if all staff could be conscious of sixth-form internet use and alert myself or the IT manager of anything they perceive as being an abuse of the trust placed with them. Would staff please use their common sense, noting the following as examples of abuse:-
- attempting to download, access or print off undesirable material
- using another student’s login name to gain access
- using the internet to send or forward abusive messages
Additionally, we would wish to discourage the use of chatlines, particularly if that use is denying other students the opportunity to use the internet for more constructive work.
Would staff please see me about this if they have any issues that they wish to raise regarding internet access. I urge all staff please not to use their own login names to enable students to have access, but to get from me lists of passwords that they can use to log student in during a supervised teaching situation. Again, these should not be given to students to use themselves.
ICT co-ordinator
ASSESSMENT (5)
Student progress in ICT work will be assessed by each department once a year, and recorded and reported to parents via the school’s reporting system. By the end of year 9, all departments will be in a position to contribute to an overall assessment of attainment in ICT. Final levels for each year 9 pupil will be established by drawing together data from across the school. Progress in years 8 and 10 will similarly be recorded and reported.
Each student will have an ICT file to contribute work to on a regular basis so that examples of work, done outside of normal lessons, can be taken into consideration when awarding a level.
The whole school audit of ICT across the curriculum will be updated regularly to reflect continuity and progression within each subject area.
RESOURCES (6)
Bookable, non-timetabled computer rooms will provide the means for all departments to deliver their ICT lessons, and use and availability of these rooms will be carefully co-ordinated to ensure optimum use of these resources.
Whole school resources and their allocation to specific needs will be reviewed on an on-going basis.
General guidelines exist for all staff in the booking and use of these rooms:-
A booking system exists in middle staffroom, allowing staff to plan and book lessons well in advance.
Staff are encouraged to submit booking needs via the ICT co-ordinator as much in advance as possible so that any likelihood of resources not being available is minimised.
The ICT co-ordinator will ensure, as far as possible, that where staff require curriculum support in a computer room it is provided. Where the ICT co-ordinator is not available to support, then technicians may be called upon to resolve any technical difficulties.
Staff are fully responsible for the conduct of their students in a computer room, and have full responsibility to ensure that the resources are not abused and are turned on and shut down appropriately. Because the computers are linked together as a network, staff must ensure that students log out at the end of a lesson, and the machines are properly shut down. Staff must monitor the use of the printer by students, and ensure that the room is left tidy at the end of the lesson.
ICT resources will be made readily available to all students outside of normal lesson times, with staff volunteering their services in support of students wishing to use these resources.
ICT work will be differentiated by extension work built into all departmental schemes of work.
ICT workshops will be made available to all students with learning difficulties, based on a structured programme, and all ICT resources will be made freely available to all students to pursue individual goals.
SECURITY (7)
Students and staff have their own passwords to the network. Staff must never issue their password to a student or allow the student any sight of it. If in doubt, staff must approach the IT manager or ICT co-ordinator to have their password changed. Students have access to the internet via their own passwords, and this access is monitored by the IT manager and his staff.
Curriculum and administrative computer systems will be integrated by the ICT manager to support practical information systems whilst retaining security. The ICT manager ensures security for the school systems via a firewall.
ICT resources will be deployed within computer rooms to support whole-class access, and in individual subject bases. The resource centre will also house 30 computers for open access at all times.
ICT resources will be maintained by the ICT manager, and the ICT development programme will be reviewed regularly to ensure that resources are future-proofed and capable of meeting the needs of the wider curriculum. ICT manager, ICT co-ordinator and head of school administration will meet on a weekly basis to discuss resources, security and development issues.
STAFF DEVELOPMENT (8)
All staff will continue to receive ICT based INSET on an equal and individual basis.
INSET will be specific to a department’s needs, will aim to result in concrete lesson plans, and will be followed up by support within lessons in delivering those lesson plans. Staff will regularly be invited to update an audit of their training needs by the ICT co-ordinator.
The school has most recently been involved in the programme of New Opportunities Fund ICT training programme, which concluded in March 2003.
EVALUATION AND REVIEW(9)
The policy will be discussed and reviewed at heads of subject meetings at least once a year.
The policy implementation will be monitored by the ICT Co-ordinator.
July 2004
Review Date July 2006
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