OCR Nationals: Getting your school started.

Quite a few schools have been asking me how to get started with the OCR Nationals coure for ICT and if I had any tips- so here goes.

Before anything else you are doing the right thing. The OCR Nationals allow students to show what they can do- it is a skills based qualification and is assessed as such. To give a little perspective, we took the decision to transfer our year 11 bottom set class from AiDA as it looked highly likely, at the end of year 10, that they would fail.

(That is not to say the DiDA suite are not excellent qualifications, its just that I teach inner city students who some times struggle with the literacy elements of the DiDA qualification- if your school is in the 60%+ 5 A*-C category I would highly recommend it as an alternative to GCSE, that your students will thouroughly enjoy!)

In the end 80% passed and their attitudfe towards the qualification was to the credit of themselves and the qualification. This year our entire year 9, 10 and 11 cohorts are following the OCR National course.

To get started- you must register as a centre with OCR- this is in addition to registering for GCSE qualifications- so must be done. Find out more here.

Then you need to get a handle on the units that you are studying at what version of the qualfication that you will be studying.

I would recommend the following units Unit 1 (ICT skills for Business), Unit 2 web design (but start the half unit- unit 21 web graphics first!), unit 4 multimedia, unit 5 desktop publishing, unit 7 databases, unit 8 technological innovation and e commerce.

You have to do the equivalent of 6 full units in order to pass the qualification- having the spare half unit is really useful because if a student fails to complete a unit for any reason- they will come out with more value.

The observant amongst you will see I have left out the spreadsheet unit (unit 6)- if you have brighter students who are interested in studying an ICT course at KS5 I would heartily recommend it- but it is significantly tougher than other units and resembles a AS level project.

Which ever combination you decide to cover with your students I would recommend that you read the assessment objectives very carefully indeed. The stringency and rigour of this qualification comes from the assessment process comes from moderation. Every part of the pass criteria of every unit needs to be evidenced in order to achieve this qualification- the GNVQ idea of equivalence must be forgotten- if one piece of the moderated sample fails then the whole group being moderated fails- I would suggest organising three moderator visits in the first year of the qualification with the first concentrating on a small sample which have been moderated as a department- so everybody is confident with gradings.

I would seriously recommend the sample assignments that have been produced by OCR- these will lead you and your students through the assessment process.

One thing we have found useful, is providing PowerPoint presentations at Pass, Merit and Distinction level for every assessment objective of every unit. This has greatly eased the assessment process as the evidence the students provide is in the order that the paperwork requires of it- this also speeds up moderation greatly- the moderators also like the sample assignments as they are able to compare more easily the work being produced by your school to that of other.

When we started the qualification lasy year we subscribed to the Thomas Telford materials (there are others!) whilst these provide assignments and structure, the £3000 a year does seem very steep and after a while you begin to realise that you probably will not use 90% of what they have provided you with.

I would recommend amking some web pages with the basic bones of the qualification and then providing links to apprpriate web site, when combined with the PowerPoints I suggested before you have a good start to some quality materials. If you then want a good range of resources I would recommend those provided by NWLG.

The good news, if your school is a member is that they are free and open source, so you can link them into what ever you want and do with them what you will. If you are outside the North West of England then they will cost a one off fee of £800 and then you can do with them what you will. Our students have thoroughly enjoyed them.

Well if you are still with me you must be keen! I hope these notes help, however, if you do have any queries, fill in a comment and I will reply!

All the best and happy teaching!

Mike