21st century learning should have no bounds

As the government focuses on providing a better level of social mobility for those disadvantaged communities, speakers at the BETT 2009 conference see technology becoming one of the key enablers for a better educated and more productive society in the future. Despite the “advantages and opportunities” available in the 21st century, the schools minister Jim Knight has admitted that there are still “significant gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged”.

Presenting the keynote speech at BETT 2009 – an educational technology conference – Knight told the audience that statistics have shown a much bleaker future for those children who have a less affluent up-bringing. “A child from a poor home is half as likely to get five higher level GCSEs as their peers. A child brought up in care is statistically more likely to end up in prison than end up at university,” he said.

With a show of passion, Knight insisted that this was “unacceptable”; adding that where you are born should not determine where you end up. Education was “one of the most powerful forces for social mobility”, he added. Technology is a great enabler, Knight said, potentially giving every child the opportunity to “expand their horizons, broaden their imaginations and enhance their skills”.

“Schools that use technology well across the curriculum and across wider school life have reduced absence rates and achieved a higher percentage of higher level grades at GCSE. And I believe we have made huge progress in making the most of those benefits,” he said. Over the last decade there has been a £5bn investment in schools’ ICT, Knight said, and another £857m marked out over the next three years. “Britain is now leading the way with the highest levels of embedded technology in the classroom within the European Union,” Knight claimed.

“Now over 99 per cent of our schools have got a broadband connection and an interactive whiteboard in over half of their classrooms. The ratio of computers to pupils is almost one to three compared to one to 19 a decade ago. The computers for pupils initiative has benefited over 100,000 pupils, bringing young people that would not ordinarily have access to technology more in line with their peers”. Knight also went on to hail the home access programme, which he said would “open the door to more opportunities for young people in the home”. At the Labour Party annual conference last year, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled the plan for low income families to get support towards internet and computers in the home to improve their social mobility.

“We will be reaching nearly 28,000 learners through pilot projects specifically targeted at those areas and groups that need them most,” Knight said. “We are making great progress with that programme. The companies that will be supplying the equipment for those pilots have been agreed and announced. These will be rolled out in Oldham, Suffolk, across the country and in national challenge schools. It’s growing and we are now on track to start the national roll out in the coming months and years.”

Knight also welcomed Microsoft’s decision to create a reinvestment fund for the home access programme. The fund will be used to fund a foundation and support the programme. “The foundation will be charged with developing and implementing a programme of training and support for teachers, for parents and help create awareness for the home access programme and offer consultancy around infrastructure to schools and will be overseen by Becta and its partners,” he explained.

Getting parents involved with their child’s learning, however, was the biggest hurdle that the government faced, Knight said. “Technology can be a trojan horse for those parents, bringing knowledge, learning and useful services direct into their homes,” he said. “But it should not be thought of as a foreign object. It’s a common language, not just for the top corporations or for governments, but for parents and children who send text messages and check on internet forums like Facebook as part of their daily lives.

“So when we talk about education, we cannot just be thinking about school. We have got to remember that children only spend 15 per cent of their time in school. So our best ally for the majority of their time is, of course, their parents at home. They are a hugely untapped resource! If we are really serious about narrowing attainment gaps, we have got to put more focus on parental engagement with their own child’s learning. And where that is happening, parents are seeing real benefits.”

Rounding up his speech, Knight admitted that it was not an easy task to prepare pupils for life and success in a future climate that “we cannot predict”. “In jobs that are not in existence, using resources that have not yet been invented, but technology is the key to it. “Getting people confident using it, making them more independent learners, increasing their technical aptitude and most importantly for any educational initiative, fostering a lifelong love of learning. I want to be in a position where technology is right at the forefront of our thinking as we plan, build and improve our schools. So every classroom is fully equipped for 21st century learning.

“But it needs to go beyond that. We need to get to a position where technology is built into our learning culture. Both in our schools and in our homes, with our parents fully onboard and teachers making the most of resources available to them and that needs to happen right across the educational spectrum, starting early on”. As government spending is expected to become continually squeezed over the next few years, getting value for money is very important according to Becta’s chief executive Stephen Crowne. Speaking at BETT, he said one of Becta’s key roles for now and in the future is “to drive a hard bargain to ensure that we get value for money”.

“We need to do it because simply investing in technology risks waste,” he said. “You have to make discriminating use of the right technology in the right context. We need to be able to say to headteachers and institution leaders of that system, ‘if you invest in this way, in these conditions, with this leadership, we can show you that you are likely to achieve these results’. Blanket investment will not deliver the benefits we want. Budgets are inevitably going to be more constrained in the forthcoming period, so we need to make a very precise business case.”

Crowne also said he believed that education providers need to work “increasingly closely at a strategic level” with their commercial partners. They can bring “huge insight and intelligence” to the issues faced, he said, “and it can only be a benefit to our learners to make sure we are pulling ahead”. Despite there being a huge number of contributors to the BETT 2009 conference, a resounding message came from nearly all of them. It was summed up best by the schools minister Jim Knight when he said: “21st century learning should have no bounds”.

PublicService.co.uk

. Опубликовано автором: Eugene Boyko on 21/01/2009. Раздел Future technology. Вы можете следить за ответами к этой записи через RSS 2.0. Вы можете оставить комментарий или трэкбэк на эту запись.