St Leonard's RC School : Background and Introduction

St Leonard's RC School is a large school within County Durham - 1400 pupils, (1200 from 11-16 years and a further 200 in an expanding sixth form).  There is an 8-form entry mainly from our 10 Catholic primary schools but last year the school took children from a further 30 schools spread across the county.

The D&T department comprises 9 teachers (5 men and 4 women) and a half-time technician shared with the science department. The teaching staff are all specialists but they willingly undertake in-service training to expand their own expertise and knowledge so they can teach across most areas of our curriculum especially in KS3.

This case study illustrates work in the D&T department that has provided electronics as part of KS3 courses for some years and is now planning to introduce a KS4 electronics course in September 2001.

The work undertaken at St Leonard's is similar to that of many other schools whose work in electronics has been largely confined to KS3.

The reasons for not developing a KS4 electronics course will be easily recognised by other schools:

• There has been a lack of expertise in the staff who teach design and technology
• An a lack of confidence in the staff who teach design and technology
• A large uptake in the more traditional GCSE's
• Very good external examinations results in the GCSE's already offered

What has changed to move the school forward? The main thing has been the employment of a new member of staff with an electronics background.  But also there has been a willingness of other members of staff to undertake some professional development.  This will enable them to explore the potential of electronics education and to take the subject through to GCSE course.

Electronics education at St Leonard's

"My name is Ian Stonehouse, head of the D&T department at St Leonard's RC Comprehensive School in Durham.   I have been teaching for about 22 years and was originally trained as a craft teacher (traditional woodwork and metalwork) at St. John's College, York.

During my early years I wanted to broaden my range of teaching experiences and became involved with courses in Control Technology and Project Technology.


The motivation for this came from two colleagues, notably Kevin Creaghan from my department and a science colleague and through a course provided by British Schools Technology (BST).
 
This was an organisation based at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham and Trent University). BST used modified buses to visit schools and LEAs round the country and provide INSET on electronics and control. Luckily, our school was a venue for one of these training sessions.
 
In September 1999 we took on a new member of staff, David Marshal.
 
David used to work as a technician at Northumbria University but decided to take up teaching.  His knowledge of electronics is proving very useful to the department.  Our KS3 work has started to move forward and David began to develop our new 'Electronic Products' course for KS4 in September 2001."