I visited two schools the other week, each of which illustrated a separate problem with technology in primary schools. Both schools were by all accounts very good schools but each had problems with their ICT facilities.
The first school was a large primary school with a ICT The problem here was that the computers in the suite were running Windows 98 from an NT server. In its time this would have been a very reasonable set up but it is simply not acceptable nowadays to present pupils with an operating system that is so out of date, especially as the operating system is no longer updated and maintained by the manufacturer. I shudder to think what applications or uses of technology the pupils may be denied simply because their computers are unable to run them. If I were an inspector, a governor or a parent at the school, I would be seriously concerned about this. As it is, I am none of these and can only use this as an example of how difficult it can be for a school to maintain and update its technology if either the finance, the understanding or the willingness is not present.
This must surely lead us to ask how much awareness raising needs to take place if we are to ensure that school technology is kept at under 3 years old.
The second school had a different issue. It had a lot of modern equipment, some of it only a few months old. Yet, ironically, its equipment worked less well than the older equipment in the previous school. The problems arose because it appears a lot of the equipment had not been installed properly and some of the new hardware was not well built and were suffering component failure. the school’s problem is that it’s level of technical support was simply not up to the mark. This is a problem which seems to affect almost all primary schools. This school had a technician who visited once a fortnight to solve all technical problems. The technician seemed to be fixing the most pressing issues only as this was all he had time for. Consequently, many issues were lining up and not being fixed for a long time.
I have witnessed this type of arrangement in many other primary schools. I have also seen worse arrangements. In some primary schools, the technical work is carried out by a well-meaning parent, other schools have a technician visit for just half a day a week. Some primaries have a full time technician, though this seems to be a minority of schools and some primaries share support provided by the local High school. In some schools, it may still be the ICT co-ordinator or other staff member who takes on responsibility for maintaining the equipment.
If we want our primary schools to make effective use of technology then we have to find ways of ensuring effective and appropriate levels of technical support.
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- Three Thoughts on ICT CPD for Teachers
- ICT : Education on the cheap?
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Tags: ICT Support, primary school
Doug,
I believe I have now visited over 1500 primary schools in the last decade and the problems you outline above I have seen more times that I care to remember. In fact, there are times when I think it is the norm rather than the exception!
At Classroom Monitor, we’ve moved the vast majority of our internla infrastructure onto the cloud and are planning on moving the rest over the summer. Our cloud partner is beginning to approach primary (and secondary) schools now, this isn’t really in my field of teacher MIS/ assessment/ management tools, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts (or others) on the ‘cloud’ in education.
Chris
@chrisscarth
PS – I wonder if the phrase ‘cloud’ will soon become as annoying as ’21st century learning’ which I completely agree makes my skin crawl!
In these times of worrying finances we see schools only spending money where they think it is needed and, in spite of a valiant effort by Becta, many schools never understood that your ICT equipment and support of it is a revenue cost and not capital. Part of the problem was how the funds came in and, for once, I agree with Mr Gove that the continued funding of capital had to stop. However, it was not clearly identified with an increase in revenue monies at the same time!
There are good standards for tech support out there, and whilst some might need tweaking, we should not forget FITS … Becta’s Framework for ICT Technical Support … We just need to do more work with senior leaders to help them understand the benefits.