Just listening casually to a NAACE podcast. David Baugh’s question. (paraphrase). “OK that’s England What about Wales, Scotland, Ireland…” Answer: “I’ve no idea”.
Reminds me of a hospital consultant who told me: “Of course, you know there isn’t a national health service anymore,just regional health services”
The situation in Wales is very depressing. Millions spent on the deeply embarrassing nGFL Cymru (God knows who uses it). Meanwhile funding for ICT in school has disappeared completely (ELC letters to our schools from publishers only increase the bitterness of my colleagues when I explain again that “no, ELCs are for English schools”…Don’t the publishers know?)
Whilst Wales wrote its own ICT National Curriculum (ie moved out control -too expensive- and re-arranged the paragraphs), we still use the English KS4 board exams so we have to come back to the same material anyway. (DiDA, which we do, expects KS3 strategy to have been followed as a baseline) Meanwhile the last documents created in Wales re KS3 ICT standards go back to the last century. Officially KS3 strategy documents are English so there has been no use of them here, but no alternative either.
Recently I tried to find out whether the material for DiDA being put together by the NWLG (http://dida.nwlg.org/), would continue to be available this side of the border. I found a contact address in England for a Regional Consortium and asked them what they knew. Within 24 hours I had a helpful reply with a Welsh e-mail contact for his opposite number. I mailed there. Weeks later… still no reply!
As for ACCAC (our QCA). Try its ICT section for yourself (http://www.accac.org.uk/eng/content.php?cID=3&pID=21) A one page link to the sad NC document.
Next year our paltry school budgets are being squeezed again. Even our best-run schools are slashing budgets and grimly hoping that enough staff will retire or leave through natural wastage. Councils, top heavy with executives with titles longer than the medal ribbons on a comic dictator and salaries to match, are passing on the worst cuts to where they consider they matter least: other people’s children and services for the elderly!
What is really depressing is that several years ago the Assembly adopted a really sensible report written by Neil Harries. It contained excellent recommendations (some basic but so seldom stated: eg fair pay for Network technicians, minimum ratios of computers) and was adopted by the Assembly. Money was even promised….
Now, it is a practical question. An average secondary school is supposed to have about 200 computers available for pupil use (1:5). To replace those over a 5 year timetable in a rolling programme (and industry uses a 3/4 yr cycle) will cost about £15,000 a year. A good technician (forget managed services out here!) about £20,000 minimum. Servers about £2,000 a year, printers say £500, projectors £1,000, scanners £500. This doesn’t allow for expansion of course! So about £45,000 per year. Once you cut this minimum figure then the final bill, when everything falls apart, will be too large for anything except some exceptional central grant and meanwhile pupil and staff confidence in the technology will have collapsed again.
Well ,its not all bad. Peter Cochrane claimed recently ( http://www.nestafuturelab.org/viewpoint/art67.htm) that “It would make far more sense to have an environment where kids own their own laptops. Laptops are now very cheap*. IT is a personal thing - it’s very difficult to work in a corporate environment where the machine isn’t yours, so every time you want to do something it’s a different machine.”
*Cheap is a relative term.
Frankly, whether we do it or they do it, that is what pupils are doing. Their phones are their communication devices whether for voice, text, pictures, video, music, games, or e-mails. As the phones get smarter so they will have more uses. Already Internet searching is possible from newer models and teenagers usually upgrade their phones after the minimum contract period (12- 18 months)
At home, they usually have broadband. They have computers less than 3 years old. They have wireless networks on occasion and many run sophisticated consoles as well (eg PSP, XBox). They burn CDs, they have digital video cameras, they have iPods (or cheaper clones), they have photo capable printers (at least until they find out the ink costs).
I spoke recently to an apparently inarticulate teenager, disapplied from the National Curriculum, who turned out to be mixing vinyl records on a second-hand professional deck, running the results through his home PC and burning the results onto CDs which he eventually hoped to sell as an aspirational DJ. Level 7/8 ICT, but he will probably leave school with no useful ICT qualification at all. Another 14 yr old pupil has taught himself php and SQL so that he can create sophisticated web sites. All done, of course, at home. Meanwhile, Wales “the learning nation” is going back to silly hats AKA Tourism and Leisure.
 Oh and our technicians are fighting back. See http://www.edugeek.net/ for their grassroots campaign. (xborder too, how daring..). Solidarnosc even.
PS Next year I am sure they will realise and start another ICT funding initiative. Can I make a suggestion: Give every headteacher a free laptop then they’ll have the set. Â
This was a rant. Do I care? Not a jot.
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