Today I was invited to attend a seminar in central London to listen to speakers from various different areas of the education sector talking about what they believe to be the role of technology in schools.

 

After being greeted with a cup of coffee, the seminar kicked off with an introduction by Lord Jim Knight of Weymouth, the former Minister of State for Schools and Learners. He began:

 

“These are interesting and exciting times for education; we are world leaders in school technology and celebrate this every year in January at the BETT Show.

 

“It is interesting because things are starting to shift – we know technology moves quickly and education doesn’t, and that getting these two to shift at the same time is tricky, but we are starting to see that shift.”

 

Knight described a report he had read earlier which states that reading skills had improved 8 per cent and writing skills 6 per cent since the introduction of iPads in classrooms. He acknowledged that there could be multiple reasons for this, but suggested that the report shows how using the technology meant children were more engaged, were writing for longer and doing work more quickly, and therefore providing more time to share and read out work to their peers.

 

Beyond the uses of technology in the classroom and the potential to engage learners, Knight noted that ‘strong, sustained improvement is through demand side reform; a consumer-led approach’. He continued:

 

“We need to liberate voice and focus on getting parents more engaged with what happens in schools. Currently, on 1 March every year, parents find out if their child has gotten into their preferred school and afterwards have very limited communications. Technology can push information to parents on a regular basis through text messaging, apps and online reporting, this is where the long-term improvements lie.”

 

Knight’s rousing wakeup call ended with rapturous applause and a frenzy of tweets from the large audience gathered for the conference.

 

Next on to the stage was Ian Potter, Chair of the Maths and Computing Headteacher Steering Group at SSAT, who delivered his presentation about the difficulties of technology procurement in schools. Potter said:

 

“The curriculum is changing. There is a trend towards a cross-curricular approach to teaching ICT but putting ICT suites into schools is unlikely to be where we send money, both because of the cost and pedagogy. Instead, the move towards mobile technology is definite.”

 

He contined:

 

“There are huge advantages of mobile technology over PCs, for instance, you can’t put enough computers into a school to serve the demand because schools with ICT suites will soon find a demand from non-traditional ICT lessons wanting to use the computers, whereas most children already have smartphones in their pockets. Of course, the issue with mobile technology is that whilst most pupils have a mobile phone, what happens to the one or two pupils that don’t?

 

“We have to ask whether we should be spending money to buy fewer things of higher specifications, or continue buying lots of things at a lower spec. Where possible, we have to make sure that our school systems integrate smoothly with the mobile devices. We all know that at present a school MIS drives, constrains and determines which other systems are used in the school, and this has to change.”

 

Touching upon the largely contentious Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, Potter commented:

 

“BSF was a prescription to achieve economies of scale, but it removed choice and flexibility. We need agencies out there to support the purchasing in schools through encouraging clusters or families of schools to come together and make group purchases.”

 

At this point, I considered jumping out of my seat to tell Potter and the other delegates about bee-it’s new group-buying service for schools, The Hive, but instead, I sat on my hands to prevent an outburst and listened graciously to the next speaker, Sheyne Lucock, General Inspector for IT, who suggested that, despite the demise of Becta, schools will always buy from their favoured suppliers.

 

Lucock went on to question centralisation versus innovation. He said:

 

“Centralisation has always been unpopular and stifles innovation. We need to question why we wanted to centralise in the first place and try to reach our goals through a local level, encouraging innovation. It is not necessarily a case that a school wants to buy just one solution that caters to all of their needs, but instead schools want to pick and chose the best bits of several systems.”

 

Echoing Potter’s earlier point about interoperability, Lucock added:

 

“We need to encourage modularity in systems, but we need to know that these modules will always work together with other systems such as the school MIS and so forth.”

 

Shifting the emphasis from products to teaching, the ever-enthusiastic Bob Harrison, Education Advisor to Toshiba Information Systems UK, stepped up to explain how the main focus for education should be on learning, not teaching-kit or technology. He did however touch upon a worrying statistic that was quite the eye-opener for all gathered at the conference. Harrison stated that:

 

“The price of broadband provisions in schools has increased. Last year, we spent £2,300 for broadband services, this year it will cost £14,600 because of schools turning into academies and opting out of the broadband consortia.”

 

If you have never seen Harrison deliver a talk before, I strongly suggest you attend one of his future seminars, but don’t expect any sugar coating!

 

Moving on, Mike Allen, Director of Sales and Marketing at RM Education, shared a Wordle created by asking school teachers about the first things that come to mind regarding education in 2011. Interestingly, the largest and therefore most common words were ‘change’, ‘challenge’, ‘cuts’ and ‘chaos’, indicating an anxious outlook on the future. However, as Allen pointed out, you only needed to look a little further to see positives coming through, not only in the words ‘change’ and ‘challenge’, but also from ‘exciting’ and ‘creativity’ which both featured fairly prominently.

 

Allen concluded:

 

“With the devolution of decision making and a shift towards spending at local level, we need to grasp these opportunities and take the positives out of the changes and challenges that lie ahead. We need to be clear on our end goals and strategies and encourage creative thinking in schools.”

 

Following Allen, Stephen Crowne, former Chief Executive of Becta, now Director of Global Education Implementation for Cisco, discussed the importance of technology in schools and specifically, the current position, opportunities and challenges for the future.

 

Crowne said:

 

“This is not a talk about Becta, however I am proud of what we achieved. We learnt a lot of lessons but the purpose of today is to look forward. Emerging markets are investing heavily into education because they see the value in ICT and the digital economy. We need a national strategy and clear leadership about how to drive value and realise the benefits of technology, built on evidence of what we know works.

 

“I have three messages to the government; firstly, we need help in sharing the effective use of ICT. Secondly, we need to build in technology from the outset when thinking about policy and strategy. And finally, they have a role in working with industry to delivery learning entitlement through IT that works.”

 

Crowne concluded his talk with a summary of where the UK is in terms of technology in comparison to other parts of the globe:

 

“The UK is seen as a leader in educational technology. This is a practice that will continue to develop, but our competitors – such as China, Mexico and Brazil – are driving ICT in education much harder than we are.”

 

An informative morning continued with a presentation from Simon Lebus, Group Chief Executive of Cambridge Assessment and Jeremy Carter, Head of Sales and Marketing at BTL Group, who discussed technology as a tool for assessment, and considered the impact the digital revolution is – and can – have on exams. Noting that 50 per cent of GCSE exams are marked electronically, and that there are lots of e-assessments happening, Lebus suggested that ‘take up of high-stakes e-testing is low despite the advantages of quick feedback and so forth’.

 

Carter added:

 

“E-assessment is not necessarily restricted to multiple choice questions, solely delivered over the internet with low security, or a replacement for handwriting skills but is instead more engaging for pupils as it is able to test deeper levels of understanding and is more secure than paper-based tests. However, there are barriers in using e-assessment such as the cost and knowledge gaps at policy and decision making levels.”

 

Before the conference reached its conclusion, Simon Peyton-Jones, Executive Headteacher Neil Hopkin, Mark Chambers, Past Chair at Naace and Dr Peter Twining took to the stage to look at the teaching and use of ICT in schools.

 

Commenting on the shift from how technology works to an emphasis on how to use it, Peyton-Jones, Principal Researcher at Microsoft, said:

 

“The teaching of technology disciplines that are always relevant is shrinking, whereas skills such as how to use spreadsheets and databases are increasing – despite these skills becoming dated quickly. Therefore, students are bored by technology and ICT lessons, as is evident by a 50 per cent crash in applications for computer science courses over the last decade.”

 

Twining, Director at Vital, echoed Peyton-Jones’ sentiments, suggesting that “we should look at the terminology we are using in schools and understand what each means”. He continued:

 

“For me, computing is the discipline, IT is the subject and ICT is the embedding of technology across the curriculum. We should forget about IT and focus on computing and ICT, but the challenge is whether we have the staff with sufficient knowledge and confidence to teach computing especially when you compare the salary of a teacher to that of a computing professional.”

 

Peyton-Jones drew the session to a close by recommending that “we must re-establish computing, or computer science, as a proper, rigorous subject like maths or physics. We need to put the excitement back into computational thinking”. He concluded:

 

“We teach elements of biology, physics and chemistry in primary school, why are we not teaching elements of technology too? Times have changed. If we do not understand digital technology in the digital world then we are powerless victims.”

 

And with that ominous warning still ringing in our ears, we were thrust back out into the hustle and bustle of central London having enjoyed a thoroughly informative  seminar and a line-up of highly thought-provoking speakers.

 

For more information about the seminar and to find out more about future Westminster Education Forum events, visit http://www.westminsterforumprojects.co.uk.