North Somerset

Corinne Mitchell, Information Technology Line Lead, Broadoak School
Julian Cox, Information Technology Line Lead, Weston College
Graham Manson, Information Technology Line Lead, Gordano School

Corinne Mitchell, Information Technology Line Lead, Broadoak School: My name's Corinne Mitchell. I'm director of ICT at Broadoak Mathematics and Computing College. Here at Broadoak, we have two classes; we have Year 9s and Year 10s. Year 10s are doing a two-year model and Year 9s are doing a three-year model, which will be the norm here from September. At Weston College, they're doing it in one year with post-16 students and at Gordano, they're doing it in two years. We've recently gone to a three-year Key Stage 4 here at Broadoak, and we felt that it was an appropriate course to offer to the Year 9s. It allows us more time to deliver the course. As a lead practitioner, I get five hours per week paid for by the local authority for me to develop Diploma resources, to go out and meet employers, to go and moderate work with other lead practitioners.

It's great to see you both again.

With the lead practitioners, we regularly communicate by email. We have regular DDG meetings, the Diploma development group meetings, at least once a term so, ideally six times a year.

Julian Cox, Information Technology Line Lead, Weston College: As a lead practitioner, we've been given a secondment of one day a week to develop and deliver the Information Technology (IT) Diploma. We've worked together for 18 months developing the materials, the resources, assignment work and methods of teaching. We've each got our own groups and we work independently with our groups, but we meet together as a Diploma development group. At the beginning, we met and we developed things like the schemes of work, how we were going to deliver and so delivery schedule. We started writing assignments. The actual structure of the IT Diploma changed with specifications, so we had to go back and revisit those assignments. And even now, we are looking at how we deliver the assignments and how the students produce the work. So it's still a learning curve for our areas of development.

What I want to look at now is an activity, which brings together the whole point of team work and trying to achieve a certain task.

Graham Manson, Information Technology Line Lead, Gordano School: We gave Unit 1 a lot of time with good reason, we needed to settle students into a totally different way of learning, and we're trying to catch that time up slightly. So we've had to rejig how we're doing things. I think the rest of the consortium are aware that the ICT group, the three of us, are imaginative, shall we say? And creative. And they do tend to ask us questions, and we tend to discuss, we meet, we know each other and so therefore, I get emails from other people on other lines of learning, asking questions. Also, we meet regularly.

Corinne Mitchell: There's one new deliverer next year who I have already met with quite a few times and next year, I'll be dedicating at least one of the five hours I have to supporting her and her school in delivering the Diploma to advise them on any mistakes we've made, or lessons I've learnt in how to deliver it successfully. We had three lead practitioner training days from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), which were designed to help us prepare for delivery of the Diploma in September. It's really useful to meet other practitioners because you can share best practice. For example, there's now a South West Leader of Learning Diploma network, which is up and running, which will be useful to go along to, as well.

Julian Cox: I think Graham, myself and Corinne work effectively together. We can openly criticise each other. We have a very good working relationship. We know each other's backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses or whatever in that sense, so we have developed a good working relationship. And I think that's very important.

Graham Manson: You need to talk to other people and you need to have, I guess, negotiating skills, because there are issues that need to be dealt with, across three or four different institutions and everyone has got their own way of learning. If you're prepared to listen and come to a valid decision, based on what other people are saying, not just arguing your own case and sticking to it, then you will make progress.

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