Home | About | Contact | Help

Briefing for School Governors

 

The Warwickshire e-Learning Community project, known as We-Learn, is an ICT Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project valued in excess of £19m over an 8-year period. The contract was signed on 31st March 2004 , involves 175 schools across the county - 139 primary and 36 secondary, and will engage 1,800 teachers and 40,300 pupils in 1,468 classrooms. The implementation phase of the project is due to be completed by September 2005 and the project will undertake constant review and refresh up to 2012.

The project is providing the opportunity to introduce a new approach to teaching - extending the learning environment beyond the classroom and supporting teachers to introduce high quality, digital resources to enhance lessons and increase engagement and interactivity with pupils.

The future of technology in schools is not just about extending the current portfolio of physical hardware and software components, but also about focusing on maximising the potential of technology to help create and shape the classroom of the future.

There are a number of objectives that are key to driving the project. These focus on teachers, pupils and the Authority, and are to:

• Raise pupil attainment across all subjects at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4.
• Increase pupil motivation and encourage life-long learning.
• Develop a high quality e-learning service that is sustainable, innovative and available to all those involved 24 hours a day/365 days a year.
• Support teachers' teaching and pupils' learning, focusing on reducing bureaucracy and workload for teachers and helping to provide enriched and motivational content and material for pupils.
• Raise the quality of teaching and dissemination of good practice across the county, and encourage collaboration between schools.
• Create a successful and sustainable teaching and learning model.

"Our vision is of schools staffed by confident, trained practitioners using classrooms equipped with dependable, exciting technology to raise attainment and encourage positive and independent attitudes to learning. The legacy for the future will be improved standards of achievement, a collaborative and skilled work force of teachers and support staff, an outstanding pool of resources, skills and knowledge and an appetite for learning."
John Parmiter (We-Learn Project Director)

The We-Learn project will be monitored and evaluated over the course of the implementation and as such we are keen that all key outputs are delivered according to our overarching ICT strategy. This includes improvements in attainment at KS2, KS3 and KS4 and a visible increase in the confidence and satisfaction of teachers' use of ICT and e-learning.

The overarching objective of We-Learn is to improve overall standards and attainment across the county. The We-Learn project focuses its efforts predominantly on teachers. Ensuring they are fully equipped and supported with ICT in the learning environment is key, and will of course have an immediate and direct impact on the quality of teaching and motivation amongst pupils. Time is spent focusing on teaching and less time spent on time-consuming lesson preparation and administration tasks.

The enhanced ICT programme will allow teachers to:

• Concentrate their time on teaching, instead of spending time managing the technology.
• Improve both their confidence and effective use of ICT in the classroom.
• Minimise lesson preparation time and reduce the burden of traditional administrative tasks.
• Help deliver higher quality, interactive curriculum content to pupils.
• Enhance teachers' continuing professional development skills.
• Collaborate with colleagues across the county and easily share resources.
• Monitor individual pupil progress therefore helping to personalise the learning process.

More than 1,500 teachers are to be provided with Teacher Toolkits, which ultimately are designed to improve teaching and learning in Warwickshire schools. The teachers will receive an RM Tablet PC for use as a personal productivity tool and to assist in the delivery of lessons. Supporting the Tablet PC, Kaleidos®, RM's virtual teaching and learning environment will assist the teacher in planning, preparing, delivering and assessing lessons.

"The Teachers are excited by the project. The Teacher Toolkit gives them more flexibility in the classroom practise and allows ICT to be used as a tool to deliver high quality learning"
Head Teacher, St Paul's Primary School, Nuneaton

The We-Learn project is a significant part of the overall ICT strategy for Warwickshire. However, it is very important to remember that it is only part of the strategy and that all schools need to be supported with the effective deployment and use of ICT to raise standards in our schools. At the moment, we are planning the delivery of a new, more integrated, ICT support service for schools which will be introduced in April 2006.

 

In order to support governing bodies with their responsibilities relating to ICT a number of meetings have been scheduled so that governors can find out more about national initiatives, our local ICT strategy and how the LEA can support schools with the management of ICT. Further information relating to ICT matters can be found on the We-Learn website http://www.we-learn.com or from the We-Learn office 01926 413780.

 

John Parmiter May 2005

The full version of this article will appear in the next Warwickshire Governors ‘ Newsletter

 

 

To facilitate contact between We-Learn and Governing Bodies it would be extremely useful to have an email contact for one or more Governors at every school. The intention would be to email information on a range of ICT issues (no more than once each half term) to enable Governing Bodies to be more generally informed and to also offer a direct route for enquiries from Governors. We are anxious not to over burden Governors with information that is nor pertinent to their needs but are also keen to ensure that Governors have a voice. The current patch meeting and Governor Forum schedule introduce a general 6 week delay in any information cascading from Governor steering group to individual school Governors and vice versa - for further details please contact Richard.Selwyn@becta.org.uk

 

Page last updated: September 28, 2005