The Classroom Quality Standards (CQS) provide a universal, classroom level, self-evaluation tool to support schools in improving provision for their more able, gifted and talented pupils. http://ygt.dcsf.gov.uk/LibraryResources.aspx?libraryId=12
Following this consultation, revised versions will be provided on CD-ROMs and made available free to all schools. Here is Naace's response.

Members are invited to comment on the strategic objectives proposed for this influential body.

Following announcements in early January 2007 about changes to the status of the KS3 online ICT test, Naace sought responses of its members and collated their views to inform discussions with Ministers.

In this month's Sharing Success we welcome Paul Springford who is Naace's Professional Officer. Paul will be live in this month's 'hotseat between 8-9pm on Tuesday 11th November. As we a trialling a new time - we shall confirm the time of the next 'hotseat' on Tuesday 25th November shortly after the first session!

Paul's profile:

My career in education began in another century when I took a PGCE course and then worked as an English teacher in secondary schools in Southampton and Peterborough. In the early 1980s, schools in England were given half a computer by the DTI to stimulate the UK industry, and I became an enthusiastic adopter. The reasons I believed in English as a subject are not very different from the reasons why I believe in ICT.

Later in the eighties I was seconded to and then permanently employed in local authority work with Cambridgeshire and I've found it hard to get away. I became involved in using communications technology at an early stage with projects using e-mail, Prestel (anyone remember that?) and BT's early internet service for education, CampusWorld. I can't remember when I joined Naace, but I'm certainly not one of the originals.I've really enjoyed the opportunity to work as professional officer for the association this year.

I'm not very technical, and still surprised that at least half of my working life has depended on things with plugs. Never mind the technology, I've been lucky and worked with some outstanding people from my earliest encounters with ICT. And most of them are probably Naace members.

Full text of the Naace response to the QCA secondary curriculum review, available for browsing or to download in Word format.

Here you will find both the inputs and the outputs from this successful and timely event.

Naace celebrated twenty-three years of advancing education through ICT, and its recognition as the key professional association for ICT practitioners at all levels, including school leaders, subject managers, teachers, advisers and consultants. Anyone with an interest in ICT in any aspect of education can now join Naace and the Association encourages an inclusive and creative approach to the development of effective teaching and learning of ICT and promotion of e-learning strategies.

This one one-day conference to appraise developments in the use of electronic data and implications for institutional and multi-agency planning enabled colleagues to get together for the purpose of updates, advice, guidance, hints and tips, presentations and hands-on sessions.

Last term the Council for Subject Associations (CfSA) which was set up in September 2007 and funded for three years (before it has to become a self-financing organisation) produced the first of a series of Primary Subject folders that went into all schools across England for free. Other organisations can purchase a copy for £7.50. I was asked to write the ICT leaflet for the first issue on the theme of 'Every Child Mattters'.

The second Primary Subject's theme is the Gifted and Talented strand of the National Curriculum and was sent into schools in the last week of September 2008. Although I gave a sneak preview of the text in the Summer edition of Primary Focus, I have included the PDF that will be distributed along with leaflets from the other 16 subject associations to all schools in England during the third week in September 2008. The third edition of Primary Subjects will be distributed to schools in January 2009 and it has been confirmed that the theme will be Globalisation.

Your comments (posted underneath the article) on what you think of the leaflet would be very helpful feedback!

Bowes children aged 9-10, in supportive pairs, created short PowerPoint presentations with a focus on the use of ICT, showing what they had learnt from their topic work on Ancient Greece.