Computing & ICT

Key Stage 3

In Years 7 and 8 all pupils have one double period of ICT per week.

In Year 7 many basic skills are taught in order to provide a good platform for future work throughout the school. There is an emphasis on gaining practical computing skills in the use of a range of software and during the year students will develop confidence in the use of computing resources and begin to learn to integrate them into their studies. We aim to provide a supportive learning environment where questioning is encouraged and learning through "doing" promoted.

During Year 8 pupils will build on the skills already acquired, producing a working database, studying spreadsheets and their use in modeling and looking at how computers can be used to control devices. The skills in database and spreadsheets are very transferable and in great demand within the science and finance communities. Many of the skills learnt in ICT will be useful in other departments whether it is graphing weather in Geography, presenting sales and profits figures in Business Studies or producing professional looking essay documents in English or History.

GCSE

In Year 9 we present the OCR syllabus short course GCSE in ICT. This syllabus offers flexibility in the approach to the subject. The GCSE short course takes the form of two pieces of coursework and an examination. The first piece of work, produced before Christmas, is on "Communicating Information." This is achieved by producing a web site on a subject of the pupil's choice. The site should have a clear purpose and well defined aims, providing useful information on the chosen subject.

The second piece of coursework, completed by Easter, on "Handling Information" uses MS Access to produce a working database on a suitable subject chosen by the pupil. The process of producing the database and using queries is documented for the project.

Coursework constitutes 60% of the overall GCSE mark and so accordingly can go a long way towards achieving a good GCSE grade.

Computer theory will be taught for the written exam in the summer. There are on-line resources for year 9 GCSE on our Intranet site and a text book is provided for each pupil.

In Year 10 there is the opportunity to continue to study at GCSE level in order to achieve the full course in ICT. This requires an additional project and a final examination to be completed. Pupils are able to study either on Thursday afternoons instead of CCF or after school when we support three study sessions per week 4pm until 5pm, to complete the course attendance at one session per week is recommended.

AS and A2

At AS and A2 Level we offer the AQA syllabus course in Computing. Our Computing course includes a programming project in each year as well as a study of how computers work and communicate with each other in the real world including the way humans interact with them.

Advanced Level Computing provides an in-depth study of most aspects of computing, systems and related disciplines. It should prove of interest and value to students whether or not they progress to further studies in Computing. It provides a good grounding in both theoretical and practical aspects of the subject.

Extra-curricular

The computer laboratories are open at lunchtime for pupils to use the computers for work and research using either the Internet or our CD rom resources for example MS Encarta 2008. After school the department is open until 5.30 with boys engaged in a variety of work-related or leisure activities on the machines. These sessions are supervised by members of the Computing and ICT department who can provide specialist help and advice where needed.