Report reveals patchy ICT provision in schools

[Mr.Ben]

Article here.

 

I actually agree with a lot of the stuff here - many primaries around here still don't have even a good quality of ICT and the people leading it are inexperienced.

 

Also has Mr. James not heard of FITS?

 

Discuss.

[AyatollahPies]

Article here.

 

I actually agree with a lot of the stuff here - many primaries around here still don't have even a good quality of ICT and the people leading it are inexperienced.

 

Also has Mr. James not heard of FITS?

 

Discuss.

 

There are a couple of reasons why, in my opinion.

 

The role of ICT Co-ordinator is not taking seriously in a lot of schools. It is literally dumped on a member of staff, usually the newest. There are of course exceptions to this, and those schools are usually the ones that have a good setup.

 

Schools that buy outside support often change providers every year. How are they meant to get a grip on setting up and maintaining a good network and support provision, if they have a different provider each year? Different people, do things in different ways.

 

We took over the support of a school in April '09. The network consisted of an awful lot of old computers, especially laptops. There was no funding to replace these. A few weeks later we found out that the school had ordered new workstations for the classrooms. They didn't consult with us, and bought some that we would not have recommended.. Throughout the year, these caused all sorts of issues. Come April '10, the school did not buy our support back and signed up to another provider.

 

3 different support companies in 3 years. All have different ways of doing things. 3 different ICT Co-coordinators in that time too.

[Dos_Box]

This is the James Report which features as an article on our homepage. It was in the media quite a bit last week as well.

[mthomas08]

I would agree, same with some secondarys I have visited. On the other hand it is very easy to sit there and say there is a "lack of good ICT"..

1. Do need the funding

2. Need staff who are capable of implementing ICT (We know schools are not always willing to pay for people who have experience/training).

3. Good value (this is not always easy but you have to shop around), we stick to Brand Name DELL for servers yet we go Novatech for PCs. This works very well for us.

4. Another BSF Failure? When we was given the report on what we needed, where we shopped from and what we was allowed to keep lets just say A LOT of money was going to be wasted because of BSF.

 

As for Primary schools I my self would be happy to take one or two under my belt if I was paid more (it would make more sense paying me a bit more for each then an individual tech per school?). I know when we become an academy we have to take one but not sure exactly how that will work.