St Mary's Diocesan School for Girls, in Kloof, Durban, has made the International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) programme part of the school curriculum, and has 300 learners enrolled in the course.
The school has also enrolled its ground administrative and kitchen staff in the programme that is internationally recognised as the global standard in end-user computer skills.
"To date, the ICDL initiative has been an enormous success and both learners and staff are incredibly enthusiastic about the programme," says St Mary's teacher and ICDL facilitator Sheryl Gordon.
"The ICDL programme has taught the candidates different ways to access information from their computers and has afforded them the opportunity to enhance their computer literacy. All our learners concur they will benefit from having it as part of their curriculum," says Gordon.
She adds that the children, some as young as 14 years old, and staff, have found the entire ICDL qualification process to be "exceptionally user-friendly", considering none of them had any previous computer science qualifications.
St Mary's teachers have already completed the ICDL programme.
The programme, taught by Gordon, has been devised to fit in with the school curriculum over a two-year period. ICDL comprises seven modules: basic concepts of IT; using a computer and managing files; word processing; spreadsheets; database; presentations; information; and communications. Candidates face a test after each module. "To date, we have done very well and have achieved a 90% pass rate overall," says Gordon.
Charmian Wightman, regional manager of the ICDL, in KwaZulu-Natal, adds that the provincial education department last March enrolled 500 computer teachers in the programme.
"The project has been such a success that subject advisors... have advocated that the ICDL certification be an additional qualification to the professional qualifications of all their computer subject educators. Plans are afoot to implement the advanced ICDL for all computer educators this year."
The Western Cape education department recently enrolled 100 Education Management and Development Centre staff on the programme.
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