The United Kingdom has a higher ratio of computers to schoolchildren than almost any other country (Exhibit 1)—but that does not mean IT has made the impact that it might have done either on educational standards or on the way that schoolchildren learn. On the contrary, although there are variations between schools, it is true to say that much of the installed hardware is outdated, that many children leave school with only a rudimentary appreciation of IT, and that large numbers of teachers are neither fully comfortable with the technology nor aware of all its possibilities.

The current situation represents a huge untapped opportunity, not only because computer literacy is an essential skill in today’s working environment, but because IT has the potential to enhance and even transform elements of teaching. Policy makers therefore need to be clearer about the educational objectives for IT, then figure out how they can best be achieved. This requires a clear understanding of IT’s potential and the challenges and costs of incorporating that potential into the educational system.

Plenty of hardware, but ...

The number of computers in UK schools has risen more than fivefold in a decade, encouraged by the last government’s stipulation that IT be taught as a separate subject as well as being used as an aid to teach other subjects. By 1994, there were on average 85 computers in each secondary school, and 10 in each primary school (Exhibit 2). The amount schools invested in IT rose accordingly, from £16 million a year in 1984 to just under £200 million a year in 1994, representing about one third of total school expenditure on educational equipment and materials (Exhibit 3).

Yet this apparently healthy level of provision belies the real state of affairs. First, there are substantial variations between primary and secondary schools and between individual schools. In almost 40 percent of primary schools, for example, there is only one computer for 20 or more children. Such inconsistencies arise from the fact that although central government contributed to the installation of hardware in the early 1980s, since then money for IT has had to come from local government and schools themselves, which differ not only in their attitudes toward the value of IT but also in their ability to pay.

Second, many machines, incapable of running the latest software, are fast becoming obsolete. About 40 percent of computers in schools were more than five years old in 1993-94. Given cash-strapped schools’ understandable reluctance to throw equipment away, the problem has probably worsened since.

Moreover, the relatively cheap Acorn computer that was installed in schools in the 1980s and came to dominate the market uses a proprietary operating system. Because the software market for this operating system is relatively small, the companies that supply it cannot justify investing to develop programs that would cover a substantial portion of the syllabus. The result is that most programs are limited to teaching basic numeracy and literacy.

The third limitation is the lack of IT training and support received by teachers. Although the National Curriculum stipulates that IT be taught as a self-contained subject to children from the age of five and that it be used as a teaching aid in other subjects, it provides only broad guidelines as to what should be taught, and gives no indication of which types of software should be used or how the subject should be approached. And, even if educational objectives were more clearly stated, teachers are generally not well enough trained in IT to be fully effective in using it.

According to research carried out in the United States, teachers need more than 60 hours of training and up to two years’ experience before they are fully comfortable with technology and able to integrate it into the curriculum. Most UK teacher training colleges give only 20 to 30 hours of IT tuition—much of which, because time is short, focuses on teaching IT as a subject in its own right rather than on using it as a broader teaching tool. And once out of college, teachers often receive little or no subsequent training, with the result that their knowledge soon becomes outdated.

Given these barriers, it is not surprising that IT in schools is yielding mixed results. Although research commissioned by the Department of Education in the early 1990s found that IT contributed significantly to student learning in mathematics, primary level English, and secondary level geography, in other areas the impact has ranged from neutral to negative. Moreover, the extent to which IT is used as a teaching tool varies widely (Exhibit 4).

Yet it would be wrong to conclude from these results that IT has only a minor role to play in education; given the impact it has had on business, it would be surprising if it were not widely relevant to teaching. The problem is not IT’s lack of educational potential, but the way it has been approached. Many IT initiatives in schools have focused on one area, the provision of hardware, at the expense of addressing how it can be used to achieve broader educational objectives.

IT’s potential

Schools need a vision of how IT can be exploited that goes beyond just using spreadsheets in maths and word-processing in English (Exhibit 5). New types of interactive software offering pre-programmed courses, for example, can transform learning. Integrated programs being developed in the United States and the United Kingdom not only enable individuals to proceed in a subject as quickly as they are able and to gain instant (and private) feedback, but also allow teachers to track a child’s progress so they can help where needed.

There are courses for group work, too. One online project aimed at pupils of eight and over uses IT to help them learn about the solar system. Working in pairs, the children search the Internet for information about, say, the sun, and visit astronomy sites equipped with text, pictures, and sound. Each pair downloads the relevant information and incorporates it into a report.

This type of networking is probably the most significant IT-related development in education. Some form of local area network has already been installed in about half of secondary schools, primarily for efficiency reasons (the main data and software applications are held in a central file server on the network to which each pupil can gain access).

Newer, however, is the idea that local networks can be linked to the outside world via the Internet and its World Wide Web. This opens up many educational possibilities, bringing within children’s reach a broader range of information and ideas than would otherwise be accessible. Software and other resources can be shared between schools, universities, and external bodies; children can gain access to yet further information and resources previously unavailable; and teachers can pool approaches and ideas. New services are appearing in response. BT’s CampusWorld online service, for example, carries project work designed for the school curriculum, while RM provides an alphabetical index to guide teachers and pupils around the possibilities.

An additional area of potential—extending learning beyond the classroom—has been opened up by the growth of computers in the home. If expansion in the home computer market follows the same pattern as the market for video cassette recorders, then 45 percent or more of households could own a computer by 2001 (Exhibit 6). This area represents a large, and largely untapped, educational opportunity. There is already evidence of a shift in children’s use of leisure time away from watching television and toward using computers and games devices. If educationally effective software applications could capture even a small share of this shift (the average child spends 28 hours a week watching television), they could boost the number of hours children spend learning.

Moving ahead

For IT’s full educational promise to be realized, several issues need to be resolved.

Educational objectives. The first issue is to clarify IT’s educational objectives. The widely varying ways in which IT has been applied in schools partly reflect the lack of a common set of views on the benefits sought. The task of clarification is complicated by the fact that the education debate is itself in flux. Should the emphasis be on acquiring facts and vocational or practical skills, or on learning for its own sake? Should children be streamed according to ability, or put in mixed classes? Should they be taught in large or small groups? And are prescriptive or child-centered teaching methods preferable?

The answers to these questions will determine certain IT policy options, such as the extent to which computers are networked and the types of software chosen. But whatever philosophy is espoused, IT can have an impact. In traditional classrooms, for example, it has been hard to adopt prescriptive teaching methods for small groups because of the limited time a teacher can spend with each group. Similarly, it is difficult to envisage child-centered teaching being applied to larger groups.

Yet IT opens up new possibilities in both areas. Integrated learning systems allow each child to follow a prescriptive teaching program at his or her own pace, while networks enable children to explore new sources of information on their own or work on projects with other schools or institutions. IT could also change the economics of teaching minority subjects. A course that might not be viable in a small school—say, in Greek—could be encapsulated on a CD-ROM or disseminated via the Internet.

Training and support for teachers. Any objective for IT will be unattainable without properly trained teachers who are comfortable with technology and eager to apply it in their work. It seems clear that more time needs to be devoted to IT during teachers’ initial training. But training also needs to continue throughout a teacher’s career. There are five "Baker Days" (named after former Conservative education secretary Kenneth Baker, who instituted them) in the educational calendar designated for training, but no firm directions on how these should be used. One or more could be earmarked for IT.

Providing teachers with their own computers (or allowing them to defray the cost of a machine they buy themselves against income tax) could be another relatively inexpensive way of encouraging them to learn. Several teachers we interviewed commented that those who have ready access to a computer—particularly if it is their own—quickly become enthusiastic about IT’s possibilities and experiment in their own time. Web sites with bulletin boards for teachers would be a further useful learning tool, as teachers who are proficient in IT rarely have the opportunity to discuss the subject with others, running the risk that any knowledge they do have quickly becomes outdated.

These measures will be effective, however, only if IT proficiency is recognized as an important skill and assessed accordingly. At present, there is no direct recognition of this by OFSTED, the government’s inspector of educational standards.

Improved software supply. Even the best-trained, most enthusiastic teachers will struggle to integrate IT into the syllabus without a more substantial software base. But devising a modern application such as an integrated learning system can cost several million pounds—hard to recoup in a market of only 30,000 schools. If some of these applications could be simultaneously sold to the home market, however, the return would be much higher. The key to success is to develop applications that attract children and parents, which means combining educational value with entertainment.

To be economically viable, any new software would have to be designed for an operating system with a larger share of the education and home market than Acorn has, or in a platform-independent programming language such as Java. And a rating system will be essential to enable parents and teachers to discriminate between good and bad and decide whether a program fits the school syllabus. Without such a system, software developers have little prospect of capturing a sizable chunk of the market, however good their product.

Suitable programs could be advertised by way of software reviews carried on the Internet. The US Children’s Software Revue is an example. An educational web site could also act as a "marketplace" for software in which commercial developers could publish trial versions of their products.

Network costs. In the past, commercial pricing has made Internet access difficult for schools. The cost of even a relatively small capacity connection to the Internet of 64 kilobits per second (Kbps), which could support eight computers simultaneously browsing the World Wide Web for text, plus moderately heavy graphics, would be about £7,000 a year at current commercial UK rates—a significant chunk out of the total budget of a medium-sized primary school.

Fortunately for schools, times are changing. In the United Kingdom, cable companies have recently announced special arrangements allowing schools access to the Internet using an ISDN or equivalent link of 64 Kbps at the flat rate of £600 a year. The cable companies have also announced a second option of a tiered fixed-price tariff ranging from £100 a year for schools of up to 250 pupils to £500 a year for schools with more than 500 pupils. The cable industry estimates that about 17,000 schools will have access to these schemes by the turn of the century, once the cables have been laid.

There are ways that schools themselves can minimize the cost of laying an internal network. During a US "Net Day" initiative, volunteers from the community and business helped wire up schools. (To be effective at a national level, this kind of initiative would need central sponsorship and coordination.) Costs can also be cut by harnessing community involvement in support and maintenance. A pilot exercise, again held in the United States, enlisted pupils to help install, maintain, and run equipment and networks. In addition, pupils help train other students, parents, and teachers, and take turns to man a help desk.

Upgrading the hardware. The age of many school computers means that a main thrust of IT policy must be to upgrade or replace those that cannot run modern software. Some schools, of course, also need more computers. Our report does not recommend a particular level of provision in schools; such decisions can be taken only in relation to the overall education budget. But for illustrative purposes, we have analyzed the costs of various configurations of school infrastructure. These are:

A computer "laboratory" model, which assumes that each primary school has enough computers in a single room for one class (an average of 27 machines), and that each secondary school has three such rooms (each with an average of 22 machines). This is similar to today’s level of provision for secondary schools, but is twice the average level of provision in primary schools. A "demi-classroom" model, in which computers are distributed throughout the school with five machines in every other classroom (for primary and secondary schools).

A "classroom" model, again with computers distributed throughout the school, but with five machines in every classroom.

A desktop model with one computer per child.

As an illustration, the total cost for primary and secondary schools under the "laboratory" model would range from £730 million to £1,200 million a year in the first year, depending on whether replacement machines are phased in over five or two years. These amounts fall to a steady-state expenditure of between £520 million and £610 million by 2006 (at today’s prices). While these amounts appear large, the steady-state expenditure is consistent with the total expenditure of more than £190 million incurred in 1993-94, which had been growing at a rate of 50 to 75 percent a year (assuming such growth rates continue for the next few years within a decentralized framework of expenditure). Exhibit 7, Exhibit 8, Exhibit 9, and Exhibit 10 show the cost of each model for the United Kingdom.

The amount schools will have to spend to achieve adequate IT provision clearly needs to be reflected in the resources allocated to education—otherwise technology could be crowded out as an avoidable, albeit desirable, item. But it is important to remember that many of the proposals in our report are not particularly costly, and that momentum already exists in schools and local communities that is waiting to be channeled in the right direction. What is most needed is a cohesive strategy. Only then will the United Kingdom see the beginning of a new era of IT in education.