The Highland Future Schools Project: Ardnamurchan High School and Glen Urquhart High School - Evaluation Report - Executive Summary

Evaluation of the Highland Future Schools Project

The evaluation of the project commenced in March 2005 and concluded in May 2006. It has

four main aims.

Aim 1 Assessment of the overall impact of the project on teachers, pupils, parents and other

stakeholders associated with both schools;

Aim 2 Identification of what, if any, impact the project has had on attainment, achievement,

attendance, motivation, school ethos, planning and the learning and teaching

environment;

Aim 3 Assessment of the project's impact in improving home-school and community links

and building partnerships with other educational/training providers;

Aim 4 Identification of what, if any improvements the use of ICT has made in terms of

developing and delivering greater learning and teaching opportunities for teachers,

pupils and adult learners.

Methodology

The methodology has combined quantitative and qualitative approaches in both schools. It

included: a questionnaire survey of teachers, pupils and parents; semi-structured interviews

with a sample of teachers and pupils; semi-structured interviews with the Headteachers, ICT

coordinators; community education staff, local authority staff; and classroom observations.

Summary of Findings

We present a summary of our findings listed under each of the four evaluation aims.

Aim 1

The assessment of the overall impact of the project on teachers, pupils, parents and other

stakeholders associated with both schools.

a) The local authority

· The Authority provided the ICT infrastructure and resources necessary to set up

and maintain the project in both schools. However, it was constrained by the

existing service level agreement with the managed service provider (MSP),

which allowed it very little flexibility to support the schools.

· Despite the Authority’s best efforts and regular communication with the

schools it was often unable to promptly resolve many of the ongoing technical

problems experienced by the schools, for example, the restrictions on access to

the school intranet due to the terms of the agreement with the MSP.

· The Authority acknowledged it had not anticipated some of the problems, for

example, synchronisation of files, which arose from individual use of

laptop/tablet PCs.

· The ongoing costs of laptop provision for Ardnamurchan High School were

borne by the Authority.

· The Authority was aware that such a heavily ICT resourced project required

some commitment to sustain it in both schools, with a need to continually

upgrade resources.

b) The school/senior management team

· The schools benefited from the provision of new ICT resources and facilities

for teaching and learning.

· The school/senior management teams were supported by the Authority, but

prevented from achieving certain aims, i.e. home-school links, due to the terms

of the Authority’s existing service level agreement with the MSP.

· The schools were dependent on the Authority to sort out the variety of technical

problems which ensued.

· The schools were constrained by a lack of onsite technical support which

prevented them from taking a proactive approach to problems as they arose.

· The schools had concerns about the replacement costs of the desktop and

laptop/tablet PCs when newer models were required.

· Ardnamurchan High School was supported by the Authority to enable it to

lease laptops after the two years of SEED support ended.

c) The teachers

· Use of a personal laptop gave teachers the flexibility of use between school and

home. It assisted teachers in the preparation and presentation of teaching

material and administration tasks.

· Technical difficulties hindered the project’s development, such that the impact

of ICT has been varied and perhaps slow to effect a change in pedagogy. Some

departments for example, technology in Ardnamurchan High School, had made

significant advances in the use of ICT.

· Ardnamurchan teachers incurred additional problems to the Glen Urquhart

teachers due to the pupils using personal laptop/tablet PCs: the technical

problems; time delays in class logging on to the server and no guarantee that all

pupils would bring the laptop/tablet PCs to the class.

d) The pupils

· The enhanced ICT resources increased pupils’ ICT skills, motivation and

engagement with learning.

· The use of ICT provided an enriched curriculum for pupils.

· ICT provided easy access to resources for pupils, a curriculum and resources

better targeted to different styles of learning.

· ICT offered opportunities for pupils to learn independently/take responsibility

for their own learning. However, the use of ICT by pupils was predominantly

determined by the teachers.

· ICT enhanced presentation of work, and was an aid to revision: providing

summaries which saved pupils time from having to write their own notes.

· Personal mobile technologies have the potential for furthering pupil

independence and ownership of learning.

· Use of the internet distracted pupils from tasks because they visited nonrelevant

sites, and using ICT also wasted pupil time due to delays in logging

in/starting up machines.

· Some pupils were more interested in the use of ICT to aid presentation of their

work rather than its content.

· Pupils were unable to work seamlessly between school and home because they

could not routinely access materials from the school intranet.

· The use of ICT has the potential for health and safety issues due to pupils

sitting in front of computers for long periods of time.

Laptop/tablet PC use

· The lack of network connections, unreliability of the laptop/tablet PC, the

unavailability if it was being repaired, and various technical problems resulted

in pupil de-motivation and frustration.

· Pupils also voiced frustration if the laptop was not frequently used, mainly as it

was considered to be too heavy to carry around all day.

e) The adult learners/community users (including parents)

· The opening of the new buildings brought facilities and resources, learning

opportunities to the community which were previously inaccessible without

travelling long distances.

· Incompatibility of firewall systems between the community and school caused

problems for providers.

· There appeared to be some lack of clarity in the communication between school

personnel and community educators around ownership and access to ICT

equipment, in particular during the early days of the project at Glen Urquhart

High School.

· The location of ICT equipment within the school building raised issues of

safety if members of the public were using equipment during the day. This

caused some tension between the different needs of the school and the

community within the shared building, with the former looking to ensure safety

of its pupils, and the community facility wanting to encourage adult access in a

user-friendly manner.

 Aim 2

The identification of what, if any, impact the project has had on attainment, achievement,

attendance, motivation, school ethos, planning and the learning and teaching environment.

a) Attainment, achievement, motivation and attendance

· With respect to raising achievement, qualitative reports from teachers, pupils

and parents indicate that using ICT has had a positive impact on pupils’

motivation, enthusiasm for and engagement with learning, and has raised the

level of pupils’ ICT skills.

· Over three quarters of teachers strongly agreed/agreed that ‘using ICT leads to

raised attainment for many pupils’. However, they felt unable to provide hard

indicators for this.

· In order to assess whether the personal use of a laptop/tablet PC by pupils had

made any impact on attendance, the quantitative data collected by

Ardnamurchan High School on pupil attendance and behaviour was scrutinised.

The data presented an inconclusive picture. It is also difficult to make any

claims as to the impact of the project on attendance, as other variables/school

initiatives may have had a greater impact.

b) The learning and teaching environment

· The project has enabled the two new school buildings to be equipped with state

of the art technology.

· For Glen Urquhart High School it has enhanced provision compared to the

previous lack of ICT equipment in the old school building.

· For Ardnamurchan High School it has provided ICT resources and facilities in

a location where previously no high school existed.

· The ICT facilities and resources include personal laptops for all staff in both

schools, and personal laptops or tablet PCs for pupils in Ardnamurchan High

School; interactive whiteboards and data projectors in some classes; suites of

desktop machines in ICT, graphic communication, and videoconferencing

equipment.

Aim 3

The assessment of the project’s impact in improving home-school and community links and

building partnerships with other educational/training providers

a) Home-school-community links

· The intention to provide home-school links through the use of ICT for teachers

and pupils, with teachers and pupils accessing work from the school intranet,

proved impossible for the MSP, local authority and schools to achieve, due to a

combination of technical and network security reasons.

· One aspect of ICT use beginning to be introduced by some teachers was the use

of email for communication with parents. This has supported links between

home and school.

· Similarly, the aim to improve school-community links for the adult learners and

community users was hampered for network security reasons, with the

managed service provider being unwilling to allow external access to the school

network. This resulted in the partner providers or community staff having to

install their own firewall systems.

b) Building partnerships with other educational/training providers

· The level of success appears to have depended to some extent on how the

partnership arrangements were initially established when the centres opened.

· The development and sustaining of partnerships has proved to be more

successful at Ardnamurchan High School, where initially personnel were

employed on a joint local authority/FE partnership which helped to establish a

firm FE presence. Even here, according to community centre staff it has taken

many years to ‘bed in’ community provision.

· The local FE college withdrew support from the Glen Urquhart community

centre, probably for financial reasons, by not replacing a staff member who left.

The attempt to secure ongoing FE provision opportunities was due to the efforts

of the community learning centre officer who was employed by the local

authority.

Aim 4

The identification of what, if any improvements the use of ICT has made in terms of

developing and delivering greater learning and teaching opportunities for teachers, pupils

and adult learners.

a) The teachers

· The use of ICT helped to develop and deliver greater learning and teaching

opportunities for teachers.

· All teachers reported they use email to network and conduct professional

exchanges with colleagues in their subject areas, and half indicated they are

already participating, or beginning to participate, in online discussion groups.

· Less well developed is their use of ICT for their own professional development,

for example, taking a CPD course online, (reported by up to one third),

although more teachers (up to a half) were thinking of doing so in the next one

to two years.

· The project provided support for ICT training that has helped the teachers

improve their own ICT skills, and this has impacted on their teaching practices.

· Teachers now use a variety of ICT technologies: personal laptop; data

projector; and an interactive whiteboard. The teachers have used ICT to create

and edit their own learning materials, particularly differentiated materials.

· The data projector and interactive whiteboard enabled them to produce more

visual and interactive materials. This included the use of image projection on

the interactive whiteboard to enhance explanations of three dimensional or

dynamic concepts.

· The use of the internet has enabled teachers to access key resources and

information from specific curriculum websites. It also provided access to some

ODL (online distance learning) courses and enabled the schools to now offer

and deliver new courses which previously would not have been available for

pupils.

· Teachers have used ICT principally as a tool to improve their existing teaching

and learning practices. There was an acknowledgment that further support and

training are needed to fully integrate ICT into the curriculum, and further

develop more flexible and novel approaches to teaching and learning.

b) The pupils

· ICT has provided the pupils with access to greater learning opportunities. The

internet has improved access to key resources, and the availability of online

learning materials, for example, Scholar.

· Online learning materials together with self-assessment software have allowed

pupils to learn independently and receive feedback on their performance.

· In some subject areas the use of simulations, animations etc. enabled pupils to

experience learning more visually, for example, the rotation of chemical

molecules, or to run experiments which are not practical to do in the classroom.

· ICT helped to remove barriers to learning for those with literacy difficulties

and opened up learning opportunities via email communication with schools

overseas.

c) Adult learners/community use

· The provision of greater learning opportunities has been mixed and has evolved

at different rates at each school.

· The uptake of higher and further education learning opportunities by the

community has proved more successful at Ardnamurchan High School.

Students can access lectures/tutorials from the local FE college via

videoconferencing, and access online courses from the UHI Millennium

Institute.

· The adult learning opportunities were less well developed in Glen Urquhart

High School. Whilst the intention of the school was to ‘create a local learning

and communications web across all areas of the local communities served by

the school’, this has been limited, partly due to the local FE college being

unable to sustain a presence and provide learning/training opportunities locally

for students.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The Highland Future Schools Project is best represented as a journey still being undertaken.

Like many educational developments it is more evolutionary than revolutionary in character.

Some of the project aims were rendered unachievable by circumstances, whilst others are still

in development. It will take a considerable time for the project to become fully embedded in

the schools, and for them to achieve all their aspirations.

The increasing use of ICT in schools, which potentially brings opportunities for pupils and

teachers to work seamlessly between school and home, requires a level of ICT infrastructure

and support that is beyond that which local authorities can offer on their own. The HFS

Project highlighted a number of tensions and difficulties in and around the provision of

reliable and effective computer and network services for teachers, pupils, schools and

communities. Until these problems are resolved, schools, teachers and pupils will find it

difficult to use ICT to its full potential for teaching and learning purposes.

On the basis of our findings, the lessons learned, innovations observed and advice suggested

by each group of stakeholders, we make the following recommendations to other local

authorities and schools considering undertaking similar initiatives, both the provision of

laptops for teachers and/or pupils, and joint school/community provision.

The Local Authority

Should:

· build in flexibility to the service level agreement with the MSP to ensure it is

affordable, but reduces additional on-going costs, and is fully set up to meet

educational needs;

· keep some element of provision of ICT support in-house;

· conduct a risk analysis at the planning stage, and have contingencies available if

original intentions do not go according to plan;

· be aware that an ICT project requires not just one-off costs, but a commitment to

sustain it, including the upgrading and replacement of equipment;

· consider leasing rather than purchasing laptop/tablet PCs;

· provide an ICT infrastructure in schools fit for purpose;

· test out the ICT systems in a limited pilot, particularly when using mobile

technologies, before introducing to the whole school;

· contribute to effective project management;

· provide good technical support to the school;

· develop a good working partnership with the school;

· regularly communicate with the school to monitor and review the process;

· provide training, support and advice to schools for the integration of ICT into the

curriculum;

· in the planning stages seek reports/research evidence of similar initiatives in other

schools/local authorities;

· in the planning stages when designing a building for joint school/community use,

consider the differing needs of school and adult users, both in terms of access and

security;

· keep a written record of decision taking etc. for continuity in case staff leave their

position.

Schools and the Senior Management Team

Need support from the local authority to provide:

· a powerful and robust infrastructure to deliver learning and teaching visions;

· reliable and up-to-date equipment which is fit for purpose;

· ongoing technical support;

· an effective ICT infrastructure to support mobile technologies;

· help with integrating ICT into the curriculum;

· funding for up-dating/renewing of equipment as necessary.

Should:

· conduct a risk analysis at the planning stages, and have contingencies available if

original intentions do not go according to plan;

· in the planning stages seek reports/research evidence of similar initiatives in other

schools/local authorities;

· be flexible and if original intentions are not possible, consider and implement

contingency plans rather than pursue a lost cause;

· communicate regularly with all relevant parties, e.g. the local authority;

· provide technical support to the staff and pupils;

· manage reliability problems to reduce their impact on learning and classroom

routines;

· provide training/staff development opportunities for staff to integrate ICT into the

curriculum;

· encourage staff to share good practice in the use of ICT for teaching and learning;

· achieve an appropriate blend of desktop and portable computer availability to

maximize the flexibility and cost effectiveness of provision;

· establish and maintain good working partnership arrangements with the community

provision;

· be aware of the need to balance the security issues for pupils with the community

needs, to ensure user-friendly access for adults in shared school/adult provision.

Laptop/tablet PC use

· invent systems and protocols which embed a culture and expectation of use by

teachers and pupils;

· consider the most effective deployment of laptop/tablet PCs within the school to

benefit pupil use.

Teachers

Need:

· technical support;

· training/staff development/time to fully integrate ICT into curricular areas.

Should:

· create lesson start-up routines and procedures which pre-empt problems of initial

computer and network start-up delays.

· create an expectation that laptop/tablet PCs will be used for most lessons if pupils are

given personal use of one;

· give more ownership/control of ICT use to empower pupil learning;

· consider adapting the curriculum to using ICT, rather than simply using as a tool;

· acknowledge the ICT skills/knowledge pupils already have from their own personal

and social uses.

Pupils

Need:

· a dedicated person within the school to go to for technical support;

· a place to store a laptop/tablet PC to save carrying it around all day.

Should:

· have an expectation that laptops/tablet PCs will be used for most lessons;

· be given greater responsibility and opportunity to choose when to use ICT;

· take responsibility for using a laptop/tablet PC.

Community

Need:

· regular on-site presence of staff to encourage and sustain student provision;

· establish and maintain good working partnership arrangements with the school;

· a dedicated separate entrance in a shared school/community building.

The full report can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking on the link below:-

The Highland Future Schools Project - Full Evaluation Report (708 KB)

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