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Don't know who Brian Sussex is, but his 'official line' on ICT in schools is somewhat different to the reality that I have come across in real Devon schools.
They each have a budget for Classroom and Administration IT and get funding from a couple of things. They can spend it on what they want, but that is a woolly area.
Yes this is a very woolly area, as usually the teachers and pupils who actually use ICT resources have almost no say in what is purchased. Often this is done on the basis of the head's or the ICT coordinator's whim. Management wise schools tend to be highly polliticised, with progression up the management ladder based on lenght of service rather than an aptitude to do the job well.
There is some existing Windows software which runs schools finances and pupil information (sickness, absence, etc).
This is the standard SIMS (School Information system) or SCOMIS (School Management Information system). This is 'DOS' software kludged to look like a windows application. However access to these systems are usually jealously guarded, so classroom teachers who would benefit most from what these system offer have to make do with paper printouts (with anything up to a week's lead time via an overworked school secretary who's paranoid about trying to printout anything out of the ordinary). Some schools allow teachers 'read only' access to this vital info on one machine running 'Read Only' SIMS in the staff room, but no downloading is allowed as this info is strictly for display only.
Each school has an ICT co-ordinator, which is normally a teacher or the head.
Too often these people should be called an ICT dis-coordinator, as their technical expertise can at best be described as 'wierd' and at worst non-existent. Recently I rated the level of knowledge, skill and understanding used in configuring two large secondary schools computing facilities. Both rated just 'Level two' against the UK 'National Curriculum for ICT' standardised 'level of achievement' scale. There were major shortcomings at 'Level three', and at 'Level four' and above they didn't even come close. Now get this, 'Level two' is what the government says the average seven-year-old child is expected to achieve!!!!! ...and given the crazy way that many schools set up their networks and teach ICT this low low assessment is pretty accurate for many schools, with many pupils working at a level way above that of the school's ICT coordinator. Some schools have even taken to getting the most able pupils to program systems for them, but of course their lack experience in fatal in critical areas like 'not working on a live specialised login system that isn't even backed up. The results sometimes work for a while but all too easily can turn horrible with everyone trying to pin the blame everyone else. Usually it's the only person who really knows what they are doing (if only they'd let him get on with it) who ends gets kicked in the b******s and shouldering the blame.
the head) generally do the IT support. Only the big secondaries have a technician. Outside orgs are sometimes used.
Strangely enough primary schools seem to be much better at ICT than secondaries. Perhaps this is because secondary ICT coordinators have more time allocated to them to really screw things up. Network downtimes of three whole weeks (or more) are not uncommon in schools, combined with massive data losses as well. Furthermore, when the school network goes down it usually takes every school PC down with it (these are configured to be wholly dependant upon the main server for login before they can be used) - that's 250 plus machines sitting idle for weeks at a time. Any business where this happened would go immediately go belly up, but within schools this is considered quite normal. One reason for this is that school PCs are not considered 'mission critical'. They are to be used just for 'academic purposes' only for the purpose of 'demonstrating what's theoretically possible'. If you want to do anything really useful on a school PC then you are simply asking for trouble. Many schools claim to have email but often this is completely unusable, for example many insist staff and students use only an 'approved' intermittently available Mickey-mouse web-based email system with perhaps a max of 10 emails per pupil including the ones they want to save. In many schools pupils have completely abandoned email in favour texting on their mobiles, even though this costs them. Security in schools is bizarre and Internet filtering is a joke. Most ICT coordinators seem to prefer the 'security through obscurity' model, and the fist thing they do is blow away 'Windows Explorer' (don't want them searching for anything useful do we!). But ICT wise the teachers' best friends are the pupils most of whom know how to hack the school system. Maintenance of school, PCs is often non existent. Disk defragmentation is something "we don't do that sort of thing here" and if a PC is bootable to a windows login it's considered perfectly serviceable even if it falls over every five minutes thereafter.
Licenses for Windows are not that back breaking.
Of course they are not when you have only paid for 35 copies of 'Office' running on 300+ machines! Incidentally most schools won't be upgrading to XP anytime soon as the 'activation' protection built in means they won't be able to flout the licensing conditions.
There is an existing infrastructure with a supplier base and support of which is provided internally. Changing the infrastructure would require some serious education. The existing school management software poses a problem in admin, of course.
The biggest problem is that ICT in schools is set up strictly for the convenience of the ICT coordinator or head whose aim in life is to get away with as little really useful functionality as possible, so they won't have to support it (bit like it was in the 80s before the advent of the PC when mini-computer and mainframe based DP departments openly lorded it over their users). In summary ICT provision in schools is often dire. My guess one reason why us Brits produce so many excellent hackers / crackers is because hacking is the only way that a school student can get their school system to do anything useful or interesting.
Schools are meeting targets, so there is no reason to change,
Correction, schools are excellent at hacking / cracking targets.
other than improvement, which is a far less compelling force than meeting a target.
...err, don't you mean 'faking'...
I'm sure, however, they'd like to save money or have more kit. There is centralised advice, but decentralised decision making. This give two ways in. Credible support, hard facts and outlined benefits (and how it's worth the effort) seem like things that need addressing.
What school's want are 'turnkey' solutions that can be installed and configured by their idiot ICT coordinator without it continually falling over. Alas Linux is not that idiot proof as yet.
Any other news from the front?
Seriously, ICT in schools is usually a BIG MESS. NOF ICT training for teachers makes the Millennium Dome project (also lottery funded) look like an out-and-out spectacular success. Yes, ther are pockets of excellence here and there, but overall we are depriving our next generation of the opportunity to learn skills they are really going to need. David Bowles -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.