At our last training we were advised to encourage all secondary schools to take part in the national pilot of the Year 9 On Screen ICT Test taking place in early summer 2005.

Although it is voluntary, it will provide you with additional information about the levels achieved by pupils and confirm your judgements or suggest that you might want to investigate whether levels have been awarded correctly.

It is not supposed to replace teacher assessment, it is meant to inform it.

Apparently the technical requirements are very easy to fulfil and only a minority of schools will have problems in this respect. There would not be much point in producing software that schools could not use!

Preparing your network

'Preparing your network for KS3 ICT tests' is a new paper which has now been added to the Becta website at
http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/display.cfm?section=22&id=2831

It is expected that the vast majority of schools will register for the 2005 pilot. The test is to be officially “launched” in 2006, so 2005 is your only chance to try it out.

During the coming year, we shall be running training about preparation for the 2005 On Screen Test.