The Computing Quality Framework - My Experience

Being one of the first 10 schools in the country to be awarded the Computing Quality Mark has been one of the highlights of the year. And one of the best things was being surprised by it!

Being a Computing Hub for the Tees Valley and Durham region was a 'starting point' though the journey started well before that. A lot has happened since 2012…

We, as a school, have done a lot to promote computing within our school and promote computing to a wider audience across our local region. How do we recognise that?

Basically, by filling in a form.

The Computing Quality Framework makes the filling in of the form straightforward, simple and easy to do. The form is split into seven dimensions:

• Leadership and Vision
• Curriculum and Qualifications
• Teaching, Learning and Assessment
• Staff Development
• Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and SEND
• Careers Education
• Impact on Outcomes

And each of these dimensions is split into five levels. 'One' - lowest - is the introductory level that shows commitment to the process and 'five' - highest - shows that your school has gone beyond the expectations of the CQF.

My starting point was to read each of the levels in the dimension and decide where my school fitted best into the criteria. Sometimes this was easy, we were clearly within one bracket and didn't have much evidence in the next level up, other times it was a harder decision. The form had three parts to complete:

• 'Enter Current Position',
• 'Enter Evidence'
• 'Enter Improvement Actions'

The filling in of the form was no issue and as it leads on from our own annual School / Department Self Evaluation, the hard work had been done already. Essentially, I entered a list of identifiable features that meet the criteria with any pertinent evidence with some improvements that are required.

The easy part was the things that I knew already and were evidenced already through my day-to-day work as a teacher and curriculum leader. The things that I didn't know, I had to ask. In this regard I am fortunate, I have worked in the same school for a long time and the staff is relatively stable. I know who does what and where to get answers from. This might have been different if I was a newly appointed subject lead or if the staff regularly changes. There should still be someone on the staff who knows who should know. The first dimension (Leadership and Vision) helps with this, because if the headteacher / principal / governors / directors are on board; and in my case, they very much were. In fact, this framework gave me a chance to go to a trust directors meeting to tell them that I was applying and to thank them for their continued support and they had the opportunity to thank me for the work that I was doing, it was win-win!

For the remaining dimensions, the same process was completed. It was simple, straightforward, even predictable and although it did take some hours, it didn't feel like it, as the progress was saved on the website and it was completed over many sessions.

Finally, I received an email to say that we had been awarded the 'Computing Quality Mark' and as I said at the start, this was a surprise. I had sort of expected that I would have to press a button, submit something or let someone know that we were ready to be assessed. I was certainly expecting to update some more as I hadn't stated that all of the dimensions had been achieved at Level 4 (the level at which the CQM is awarded). The key point to note here is that the CQM is awarded on a best fit model. We achieved more highly in some dimensions and less highly in others, but on balance (best-fit) we made the grade!

I hope you will find the process as straightforward as I have found. The main point to note is that the form is just a process to go through, the activities, content, developments and strategies that have been put into place over years are the actual hard work. It is this that needs to be rewarded, and so it should.

More information is available from: Computing Quality Framework