Belfast Model
School for Girls

The Belfast Model School for Girls was the focus of a recent article on Simon Doyle's Education page in the Irish News. The article pointed out how the school is among the first in Northern Ireland to offer the more vocational qualification of OCR Nationals as an equivalent alternative to traditional GCSE ICT. This shift away from traditional GCSE to a more vocational qualification is in accordance with new government guidelines which require all post-primary schools to offer a minimum of one third vocational qualifications at KS4.

In his article Mr Doyle focused on our specialist school discipline of ICT. He noted that the school takes every pupil through the OCR Level 2 National First Award in ICT in Year 10 and that by the end of their GCSE year (Year 12) all pupils will have taken at least the OCR Level 2 National Award in ICT. Many go on to add the third and fourth components, meaning they come to the end of Year 12 with four grades in ICT (equivalent to GCSE A* - C).

Mr Graham, the principal made the point that the continuous assessment of the OCR Nationals enabled many pupils to excel as the stress of a one-off exam is removed. He was quoted in the article as follows, "It (OCR National) is a vocational course equivalent to GCSE which we feel suits our students better for A-level Applied ICT where we had 100 per cent success at A-C grade last year. In 2007 three of our girls were in the top five overall throughout the UK out of 1,622 entries in the subject, which is a great achievement for a non-selective school with an intake profile of no As and very few Bs and Cs at 11-plus." Mr Graham went on to highlight the importance of continuing to build on the school's success in ICT saying, "Girls only make up about 20 per cent of the ICT workforce; we are trying to make sure that a lot of them can get jobs when they leave school."

The article was brought to a conclusion with reference to the school's Moodle based Virtual Learning Environment and the use of ICT in Learning Areas throughout the curriculum. One example currently in progress is the use of stop frame animation shorts in Year 9 Art.