UK schools to maintain ICT spending

Most UK schools are set to keep ICT budgets flat next year, according to research by the British Educational Suppliers Association. The ICT in UK State Schools report by the trade body for educational suppliers' reveals that 58 per cent of primary schools and 51 per cent of secondary schools are likely to maintain planned ICT …

[penguin slapper]

College ICT

The College I was at for the last 2 years (ICT "supported" by Capita) was a farce.

Teachers refused logins so had to use Student logins.

Whiteboards that were unusable.

Most classrooms either had no PC's or ones that were broken.

No one, teachers or students, allowed to bring own laptops in and logon ("we had a virus 2 years ago and introduced a blanket ban").

Students provided with (unworking) logons half way through the year, left to themselves to contact ICT and remedy this (the guy who designed the Moodle site no longer worked for them and had to be chased down to get the master password).

Student areas for working in contained row after row of XP based machines in an area staffed by Security Guards that would make the average American Prison screw look tame. (They forcibly logged people off machines if they even so much as spoke to anyone else and refused to allow students to save any work they were part way through. Many students lost pages of work that way. The security guards were not even disciplined).

All this in a college that had IT courses, a number of IT labs, even one with nothing but Macs in.

Believe me when I say - children (in the shape of adults) are now in charge in many places. They make bad, uninformed decisions, are entirely unaccountable and look genuinely bewildered when they idiocy of their decisions is pointed out to them. (The most amazing one I heard was "why haven't you provided an area for students to work together in groups in?" "it didn't occur to us").

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...

>Despite schools being faced with many financial pressures, the survey indicates schools are managing the cuts sensibly and with optimism

Tosh - talking up share price or rather hoping to minimise the drops - the bigger companies have already seen multi-million contracts evaporate with the end of the BSF programme. ICT spending over the next 5 years will grind to a halt and everyone knows it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Also the Harnessing Technology money won't come around and I know of a few cases where it was spent quite thoughtlessly >:-(

[Matt 21]

Why?

I really can't see the need for computers in primary schools. Children don't need to be taught how to click on things and use technology. I recently visited a country where kids don't have computers, yet two kids "nicked" my mobile for five minutes and were almost immediatly taking pictures of each other and the menus weren't even in a language they speak!

We'd be much better off teaching them how to read and write and not hit, kick, spit at or torment each other. The money saved could then be used to privde study materials and reduce class sizes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Over priced

My friend popped into his daughters (primary) school, and was shocked by how expensive, and how bad most of the (RM) machines were. He helped install EdUbuntu, saved the school a fortune, and gave them better software than was previously supplied.

Upon more probing, he found that it was a similar setup in schools in the area. All for more ICT in schools, but the money needs to be spent in a smarter way.

[HollyX]

Mmm

The only RM PCs I've seen arrive in the last 5 years (accross 85 schools) have been from the Tesco computers for schools programme.

It would appear there's a fair amount of mis-advice still circulating outside of this authority; as resources dwindle I'm hoping FOSS will get a foothold to get more value from old PCs and school advisors will pull their hands out of RM's arse.

[Tron]

Modest proposal.

Can we all club together for a class action to force them to call it 'IT' instead of 'ICT'?

[Robert Forsyth]

Couldn't manage a noce graph?

That is all.

[hplasm]

No surprise-

The Microsoft backhanders are still flowing then?

Think of the money being pissed away that could be saved- and kids might Learn Something about IT and computers, instead of MS mousing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Major Failures

There does seem to be a lot of equipment being purchased for schools. What is NOT mentioned is the complete lack of training given to the teachers or teaching assistants in the basic use of this equipment.

I support several primary and secondary schools (hence the AC) and the majority of staff (including administrative staff) do not have the rudimentary IT skills required to use basic systems.

Yesterday, I had to teach a staff member how to use the (low tech) RM Easymail system to send an email with an attachment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[andy bird]

hmmm

The article was bad enough.. the above comments just as bad...

1st off this survey was taken way back in June This MUST have been before the current gov announced that the only ring fenced ICT grant (Harnessing Technology) was cut by £50 million IN YEAR. This was unprecedented. Why? in order to fund the gov plans for Free Schools!!! In the words of Mr Gove this was a "low priority ICT grant." You recall there were 62 free schools. Next year there will be NO harnessing technology grant.. £100M less in the schools that was ring fenced for IT spending.

In reality this grant funded the schools internet connection and refreshing hardware.

Couple this with the end of the BSF programmes and the ICT spending and infrastructure in general is going to go down the drain if something does not happen soon. ignore what you have heard BSF = massive regeneration of school building and ICT. This will be disastrous for the UK IT industry (not just RM who only have a presence in some authorities) and FOR OUR PUPILS!! Remember them.

The UK has a huge international lead on our use of ICT in teaching and learning. This is about to go.. as a small local authority we have hosted many an international visti and they all go away wide eyed at how far our schools are ahead. They then run back home and start to catch up.

@Anonymous Coward the worst possible thing that can happen to a schools ICT plans is to

@tron ... the Communications part is just as important.