Sarah Quantick

Sarah qualified from The Nottingham Trent University with a BSc(Hons) in 1993, she then went onto complete her P.G.C.E. (Sec. Ed.) at Loughborough University. During her 12 years teaching Sarah has held various positions of responsibility which have including achieving Advanced Skill Teacher Status (2002) and 5 years as a member of a Leadership Team during which time she completed her N.P.Q.H (National Professional Qualification for Headship) .

 
Over the past 2 years Kent County Council (KCC) recognised Sarah’s diverse and unique combination of experience and skills, and seconded her to the LA as the Strategic ICT Advisor for Kent. Sarah’s principal accountabilities for KCC were:

• Advising on the strategic development of ICT whilst ensuring that the education values which support teaching and learning were maintained

• Advise and support Headteachers and Governors in schools on ICT issues and its education value

• Advise schools on all aspects of ICT provision including Building Schools for the Future (BSF), the development of New Technologies and resource requirements

• Contribute to the County vision for ICT through the Kent Secondary Strategy by supporting and disseminating innovative practice in the use of ICT.

During these 2 years Sarah has continued as a Deputy Headteacher at The Community College Whitstable (CCW) where her main responsibilities were for the leadership of ICT including:

• Development of the ICT infrastructure to industrial standard through flood and wireless networking installing citrix servers and allow for 24/7 portal access. Whilst creating a mixed environment combining thin clients, fast clients, Microsoft based Rich clients, Apple Macs and mobile devices to ensure that end users needs were met.

• Development of a Virtual Learning Environment supporting online education content, online curriculum based activities and online termly assessments.

• Implementing and leading on m-learning initiatives.

• Engage staff and students in the use New Technologies to support Learning and Teaching

• Successfully gaining the school Maths and Computing Specialist status

• To advise the Headteacher on ICT developments incorporated within the BSF programme

During Sarah’s secondment KCC and CCW have become involved in BSF, this has given Sarah the unique opportunity of being involved in BSF from both a Sample School perspective and a Local Authority perspective working through to preferred bidder stage. She has worked with sample and non-sample schools in the development of ICT visions and ICT Strategic Developments Plans contributing to the Local Authorities ICT Output specification. Sarah has engaged with bidders to discuss the use of New Technologies, m-learning, learning platforms and ICT infrastructure to enable the educational vision of each of the individual schools to be achieved.

As an Independent Educational Consultant Sarah aims to further embed the use of ICT and New Technologies within education. She is currently training to become an Adobe Certified Instructor, a Certified Training Technician and Certified Internet Web Professional. Sarah continues to support schools using her vast teaching experience as an excellent classroom practitioner and Advanced Skills Teacher, her leadership experience as a Deputy Headteacher and her consultancy experience as a Local Authority Strategic Advisor for ICT. In her spare time Sarah enjoys parachute jumping, walking her dogs and travelling abroad.