Dick Sblog

Last week I attended a consultation workshop organised by NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and BERR (Dept for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform). The workshop was staged to get feedback on a report prepared by Outsell on the topic of, “Innovation in Internet Content Services”.

The report contained a SWOT analysis of the opportunities for UK plc. The potential market in this sector is huge and the UK has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it also has some serious weaknesses, including ‘Management skills – understanding of ICT relatively poor’ and, damningly, ‘Educational system inadequate to prepare pupils for this emerging networked society’.

This point is elaborated in the document, I quote, “With schools now commendably producing a much more machine proficient workforce with a far larger knowledge than ever before of the role and importance of the computer in society, there is now a need to push forward to a recognition of the proper use of networked collaboration. Such skills development would in turn help students in future employment in real or virtual workplaces. SIG members [the special interest group that was consulted for the report] also observed that it is hard to envisage this barrier being overcome in an educational system where, all to often, heads and staff have been slow to recognise the need for change in the school’s own use of network applications, collaboration and e-learning to secure greater productivity, better decision-making and more effective compliance with policy and regulation”.

That says it all, really.

Back at the end of the ’90s, the Web for Schools Project, was set up. It involved us training 700 teachers (across the then 15 European States) to author html – this was the era before html editors – and to train their students to do the same. This resulted in 2000 kids being trained to code and the establishment of 70 transnational collaborative projects. Actually, that’s unfair on the kids – once they got going they trained themselves, they couldn’t be bothered to wait for the teachers and our trainers to catch up! The really interesting thing about this project is that it was funded by the trade ministry in Brussels, not by Education, because they were so worried about digital competition from the Pacific Rim. WfS was about demonstrating to educationalists and teachers what could be done with a bit of imagination and the achievements of the participating students were fantastic.

Depressingly, 10 years further on, I would suggest that there is a case for BERR to think about doing the same thing now and fund some more such projects; schools still don’t seem to have got the message.