I have a interview with King’s on the PGCE ICT course in a few weeks and wanted to know if you knew as to what sort of written test I might have to do? I assume it’s going to be a short QTS test of some sort.

I was not given any QTS type questions. There was no numeracy test nor general knowledge test about history, geography, science, etc. I was asked to write about an educational topic and this could have been used to evaluate my writing and skills and knowledge/interest in education.

For preparation for the role I’ve gone through a ICT course book to get some ground, I have researched on most common pgce interview questions and tried to do a practise lesson plan.

I don’t recall being asked to prepare or submit a lesson plan. I think that I may have been asked to deliver the first 2 minutes of a lesson and this was probably used to check interaction with the “class” (other interview candidates) and confidence when speaking. You would not be expected to deliver an outstanding lesson!

I think the only area I feel weak on is not getting spending enough time in secondary schools in an ICT class environment.

More experience would be better (for you) but I don’t think it will make much difference to the interview and selection process unless competition for places is particularly high.

(I’ve also got the correct documents and previous IT that King’s requested)

If you mean that you’ve bought the recommended textbooks, that will be useful during the course but I don’t think it will be significant for the interview. I found the ICT questions extremely basic.

Is there anything else I should be doing in preparation?

You might like to consider the following:

• Read some TES articles online or in your local library. Make notes on a current topic that you could discuss in the interview if asked to do so.
• Read about Gove’s reforms and the future direction of ICT and/or Computing. Will ICT be phased out as a discrete subject and be replaced by Computing?
• What is Computational Thinking?

There was a problem sending the command to the program.

The Microsoft Support website says this problem can be corrected by changing a setting within Microsoft Excel or by downloading and running a small program named Microsoft Fix it 50392.

To fix the problem yourself, view Excel Options > Advanced > General and then make sure that Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is not selected.

Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)

It’s that simple.

My priority is to find a full-time position so I can complete my NQT induction year, but in the longer term — or maybe to fill a gap — I would be interested in doing home tuition. I would probably do this through an agency/website or by personal recommendation but I’ve also noticed a number of jobs and tutors advertising on postcards in local shop windows.

As you can see, some advertisers make no attempt to conceal discrimination based on ethnicity and/or religion and I wonder whether it occurs to them that they are breaking the law and causing a great offence to a good many people.

Jobs, rooms and flats are being offered to Asian / Pakistani / Muslim families only and with prejudice like this it is not surprising that much of west London including Southall and Hounslow have become predominantly Asian areas.

• Cleaning job for ***** ****** only.
• Catering job for ***** only.
• Room to rent for ***** girl only.
• Room to rent in ***** home. Must be ********** only!
• Wanted: nanny for two children. Must be *****.

The advertisers and the newsagent shops are responsible for this unacceptable discrimination and should in my opinion be prosecuted. I doubt this would have any significant effect on bringing communities together (and White British people back to west London) but it would be the first small step in the right direction.

I won’t post the university name here but I will say that it was in the SW of England.

I was disappointed to hear that two students on my course may have dropped out or deferred until next year. I’m not sure what their circumstances are but they were both strong candidates and could easily have finished the programme. That makes just three people (out of 20 in total) who have dropped or deferred from the course this year.

The solution:

It appears that you cannot register on the imqq.com website using Google Chrome. After several failed attempts using Google Chrome, I tried using Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 and user registration worked first time.

Search terms that may have brought you to this page include:

• Cannot register QQ messenger
• Problem registering new QQ user name
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• QQ user name problems

        Dim s1 As String = "Hello World!"
        Dim s2 As String = ""

        Dim i As Integer = s1.Length 'number of characters

        While i > 0
            s2 = s2 & Mid(s1, i, 1)
            i = i - 1
        End While

As you can see, it iterates through the characters to build a new string. You might like to note that I have used the “&” character and not the “+” to concatenate the strings. Both will work, but there is a small difference explained here.

There is also a very recent (4 April 2012) article on statutory guidance for schools with reference to listening to and involving young people. This refers to the Education Act 2002 and the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This looks very useful for my School Experience Report (SER) on primary to secondary transfer.

Each interview lasted about 15 – 20 minutes and the ones that I have finished typing averaged at about 2,000 words each. With that sort of word count it’s a shame that I can’t include them in my report and then I’d already be finished.

The consensus seems to be that there are no government documents detailing statutory policy specifically to manage the primary to secondary transition in England. However, legislation has been passed to protect the welfare and interests of students (e.g. The Children Act, 2004) and the government has commissioned and published various reports for primary and secondary education.