INTERVIEW | 09
Schools Commissioner Frank Green CBE, talks academies, coding and the future of edtech in schools
COMPUTING CURRICULUM: BACK TO THE FUTURE
F
rank Green took up the post of national Schools Commissioner on 1st February 2014. As Commissioner, he is the public
face of the academies and free schools programmes. Previously, Frank was Chief Executive of Leigh Academies Trust and also has 15 years experience as a headteacher. Rebecca Paddick caught up with him
at this year’s Education Show, and asked him about the changing world of edtech.
process, it is becoming invisible, and tech is at its best when it is invisible.
Is it going to be a challenge for teachers to keep up with developing tech? I would have said that fi ve years ago, but I think the latest generation of teachers are digital natives. They’ve grown up with access to the web and social media, and they know how to use it. There is no fear about it anymore.
so I could teach children how to programme Hex coding, therefore devising algorithms. The whole progamme was tremendous for building up the understanding of computing, and although this curriculum is a lot simpler than that, it's an excellent starting point. It’s essential for the children of today to understand ICT as it is, inevitably, our future. EDQ
"P E O P LE ARE KE E N T O AVOID AC A D EMY ST A TUS BECAUSE TH E Y S T ILL AS S O CI A T E I T WI T H FA IL UR E , BU T I T ISN’T THE CA SE AN YMORE"
Tell us about your work with free schools and academies – how are you set ling into your role as Education Commissioner? It’s an enormous challenge. There is still a lot to do to push through the free schools and academies programme and to eff ectively restructure English education. Some of the major challenges are about misconceptions. Because the initial academies centered around failing schools, a lot of people are keen to avoid academy status because they still associate it with failure, and it isn’t the case anymore. Free schools and academies are new, self-managing, self- improving systems of education.
What are your thoughts on bringing more technology into schools? Are you on board with it? My experience and history would say that I am very on board with technology in education. Technology is all about communication and access to information, and the teacher’s job is to make sure that they maximise both of these and link them in the right way so that you expand the knowledge and skills base. We can use technology to show
and explain complex ideas in simple ways. There are some wonderful apps around that I think are still under-used by schools. Technology is becoming a seamless
What about budgets; can schools aff ord the latest edtech? When people ask me how to keep within their budget, I say to them to make sure you have got a fabulous wireless network. Then all you have got to do is build on that. One of the major challenges for schools
is get ing one device per child, but the emergence of tablets, and the iPad being the driver of the market, has brought this goal a lot closer. BYOD will soon become a common
platform and could save schools a lot of money in the long term.
What do you think of the new computing curriculum? I call it ‘back to the future,’ because it feels like we have come full circle. As a physics, chemistry and maths teacher in the early-80s, I can remember using the Microelectronics Education Programme. I remember taking apart a ZX81 Spectrum
Frank Green CBE
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