History

In the 1980s, money was found to put a computer into every school in Britain. Many of them gathered dust in a corner because they were old and not sufficiently powerful to run modern software and teachers were not trained in the use of ICT. Nowadays, there is a big drive to put modern computers into schools and to train all teachers.

Current State of Play

• Current figures one computer to every 8 pupils in secondary schools (1:13 in primaries).
• Every child and teacher to be connected to the Internet by 2002.
• TTA (Teacher Training Agency) is spending £230m ensuring that the teaching profession becomes computer literate.
• Research Machines is the biggest supplier of software and hardware to the education sector. It has so far connected 10,000 schools to the Internet.
  

Advantages

• Word Processors, DTP and Spreadsheets are "productivity tools"
• Multimedia CD ROMs are "interactive"
• The Internet provides cheap access to an amazing array of resources
• ICT can provide distance learning facilities (for example, for those who want to study a minority subject e.g. Russian and Japanese.)
• ICT can enable links between schools or business organisations.
• ICT helps those with disabilities e.g. text to speech conversion for blind pupils.
• Exam Boards are increasingly using ICT to mark exams. See: Exam Board to Replace Paper Marking
• Computers can be used to take registers and to write pupil reports
  

Could Computers Replace Teachers?

• Computers can help children work at their own pace, repeating sections they don't understand
• Computers are endlessly patient
• Computers present material in a consistent way and you are not dependant on the skills of teachers.
• Computers are cheaper than teachers.
• Sitting in front of a screen all day could be more boring than being taught by a good teacher
• Children go to school for social reasons - they need human interaction
  

Read John Clare's article in the Daily Telegraph (12/1/00)

Why is the government so keen to spend £1.6bn on something that (with one or two exceptions) has failed to demonstrate any educational benefit Whatsoever?

TTA (Teacher Training Agency) is spending £230m ensuring that the teaching profession becomes computer literate.

Government's ICT policy is similar to the millennium dome - it looks good and all that is missing is "meaningful content"

The TTA says that ICT should allow either the teacher or the pupil to achieve something that could not be achieved without it, or to learn something more efficiently and effectively than would otherwise be the case. Maths teachers, for example, will have to decide whether the time needed to become familiar with a piece of software could be better spent teaching some other way. " . . . they will want to evaluate the benefits of using ICT over pencil and paper." Geography teachers "need to ensure that pupils remain focussed on answering the geographical question rather than using ICT for its own sake." French teachers are warned of "ICT's limitless power to distract" and they should "avoid letting pupils spend the whole lesson making a bar chart or using a computer to design a poster with minimal language content."

Conclusion: forget the Internet for all but sixth form pupils - everyone else will learn more and waste less time using reference books. Use the TTA's test - does ICT do it better? Most CD ROMs are a "worthless distraction". All that remains are integrated learning systems, such as Successmaker, which, when properly managed, are an excellent way of drilling in the basics of Maths and English. John Clare also praises "Future School", which consists of 150 hours of film of good teachers teaching in front of a blackboard. The advantage is that the pupil can rewind bits they miss and trials have demonstrated significant gains.

Case Study: Eastwood School, Essex

On January 16th 2004, the Evening Echo published a story about Eastwood School in Southend, in which it is reported that the school is planning to ditch its entire collection of library books and replace them with Internet terminals. "It is believed the English department will retain curriculum texts, while other departments will keep some reference material, but the central library will be replaced by computers." Some teachers in the school anonymously told the paper that the reference collection in the library had been run down in recent years to save money. The school then decided to abandon library books altogether to avoid the cost of their replacement.

External Links

Pupils Find Internet a Poor Learning Tool (Julie Henry - Daily Telegraph)

Why learn when you can surf? (John Clare - Daily Telegraph)

Computers "to replace teachers" (John Clare - Daily Telegraph)

Internet in Schools Fails to Improve Results (John Clare - Daily Telegraph)

Mr Chips or Microchips (transcript of a BBC documentary).

Computer "turned teacher into a killer"