The e-strategy- an evolving strategy

The strategy has four priorities:

1. To transform teaching, learning and help to improve outcomes for children and young people, through shared ideas, more exciting lessons and online help for professionals
2. To engage ‘hard to reach’ learners, with special needs support, more motivating ways of learning, and more choice about how and where to learn
3. To build an open accessible system, with more information and services online for parents and careers, children, young people, adult learners and employers; and more cross-organisation collaboration to improve personalised support and choice
4. And achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness, with online research, access to shared ideas and lessons plans, improved systems and processes in children’s services, shared procurement and easier administration.

The strategy covers all sectors for the next five years and beyond. It is not build as an independent policy initiative but aimed to work in support other DfES and wider governmental strategies as illustrated below:

Source: Harnessing technology delivery plan, Becta 2006

After the publication of the e strategy the DFES together with Becta developed a more explicit vision for the delivery of the e-strategy with more focus on learning rather than technology. They developed four themes that are seen as significant areas of delivery; ematurity, personalised content, knowledge architecture and strategic technologies.
The status in the provision of the ICT infrastructure and digital content in the framework of a personalised learning agenda are specifiaclly looked at in the following as well as overall progress made in schools and educational benefits with ICT.

Delivery to date
According to BECTA (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, December 2006) several achievements have been made. Since 1998, the government has invested over £3.5 billion (5.25 billion Euro) in creating an ICT infrastructure in schools in England. It has also created the Curriculum Online portal where schools can find all the multimedia teaching and learning resources they need. Where this content is commercially produced, schools can use the government’s elearning credits and other funds to purchase them. Results of latest evaluations of this initiative show that teachers begin to benefit from the re-use of learning objects for lesson preparation, but still struggle to find the time to select and evaluate digital resources and then embed them effectively into their practice, including the required changes in planning for learning and teaching. To easily find quality resources is still a challenge for teachers. (Becta Review, 2006)

Moreover, the use of digital material depends on a wider range of factors than the quantities of resources available. For example, teachers who had interactive whiteboards permanently located in their classrooms used them more, integrated them with other teaching approaches and were more competent and innovative in using them. (Curriculum Online Final report, Becta 2006).

In terms of infrastructure there is now improved access to computers with an increase in the computer to pupil ratio to 1:6 in primary and 1:3.6 in secondary schools. On average, today 9 pupils share a computer in schools in the EU (Empirica, 2006).

Over 99% of schools are connected to the internet, with 97% of primary and 99% of secondary schools connected to broadband. The government has created a single national education network through 10 regional broadband consortia with the ability to connect to every school in the country. 16 million users in the education system have access to broadband and 350,000 teachers are saving time using ICT for planning and administration, according to the DfES, who also states that there are interactive whiteboards in nearly every school and one million primary school children are using e-learning in class each day.

Concerning training and support for practitioners and improving organisational capability much has been done in training head teachers. Head teachers are seen as a key driver for change. Over 10,000 head teachers have completed the Strategic Leadership of ICT professional development course jointly developed by Becta and the National College for School Leadership.
http://www.ncsl.org.uk/

An agenda for personalised learning offers
Current key activities in implementing the e-strategy are to support personalised learning offers. The e-strategy outlines that by 2008 every school learner in England should have “access to a personalised online learning space with the potential to support e portfolios” and by 2010 all schools will have integrated learning and management systems.

Currently, the way in which learning platforms are being used to deliver content and courses is unclear. There is evidence that schools are using their local area network and websites as a repository or shared area for their own learning objects and teaching resources, as well as drawing them from external sources.  The need for improved learning platforms to support and deliver interoperable content will become increasingly critical to successful content deployment and use. Such developments are at an early stage in the school sector and the way teachers can exploit learning object repositories will be important in the future.
(Becta Review, 2006)

To ensure that by spring 2008 all schools have a learning platform service with at least core functionality, Becta specifies three areas of functionality. Learning platforms should have communication and collaboration tools to enable both peer to peer and peer to mentor dialogue as well as individual online working spaces, for the school workforce and pupils. Teachers should be able to create or adapt existing digital materials, where required linking them to other online resources and then make them available to appropriate groups or individual pupils. Access should be safe and secure, anytime and anywhere.

Teachers and pupils acknowledge how digital materials could be used to appeal to a range of learning styles and support independent learning. The way in which content and digital resources are used is therefore crucial to personalised learning.
Within this context, Becta is currently developing an overall vision for its e-content strategy, A vision for personalised content for future learning, which has been presented by Vanessa Pittard, Director Evidence and Evaluation at the EUN roundtable in Bruges in December 2006 (http://rountable.eun.org).

In designing the strategy aspects such as behaviour, motivations and capacities of various stakeholders (providers, children, parents) are identified. Motivational aspects for learners comprise for example to create a more engaging learning experience, accelerating learning, the satisfaction of individual needs, greater ownership of experience and value for money. In terms of learners capacities access (including knowledge of availability), the ability to judge, understand and articulate their needs, to create, use personalised content tools and methods will be crucial in the future.  Flexible curriculum design and effective support for change are other important issues next to technological content standards.

Evidence on the progress of ICT in schools
The UK is one of the forerunner countries in Europe that regularly publishes evaluations on the progress of ICT in schools.
Several recent publications, mostly commissioned by Becta, give an insight into the state of affairs. Becta is a non Departmental Public Body and the Government's key partner in the strategic development and delivery of its information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning strategy for schools and the learning and skills sectors. Contrary to many other European countries, ICT is still high on the policy agenda in the UK, which can be seen in terms of investment and ongoing efforts in the field. This brings with it the need to show the return on investment and recent impact studies start to shed light on the issue.
The UK also has undertaken considerable efforts to communicate these research findings to practitioners. Results of this strategy are leaflets showing to practitioners’ the areas where ICT can make the difference. Some of the key messages arising from the research are:

• ICT clearly raises standards. There is solid independent evidence that ICT has a positive impact on pupil outcomes. Some subject results improve by half a grade as a direct result of pupil use of technology for learning
• ICT increases pupil engagement and motivation, it enables personalised learning and helps to prevent exclusion
• School leaders and teachers are central to raising standards. Becta's self-review framework for schools offers school leaders and teachers a straightforward route for improving their school’s effective use of ICT
• Technology makes better use of productive time and helps reduce administrative burdens.  ICT can transform the productivity of schools as institutions by supporting smarter management information systems.
• Broadband enables schools to make effective use of high quality digital content and services

Source: Making a difference with technology for learning: evidence for school leaders. Becta, 2006.

Despite considerable progress made there is the need to embed ICT in schools more efficiently and in more schools and ease the discrepancies between home and school use by giving students more possibilities to access ICT at home. 

As the Harnessing technology delivery plan (Becta, 2006) outlines, currently, too few schools, colleges and training providers take all the actions needed to reap the benefits of ICT consistently, and so there is now a strong moral argument that all providers should gain the clear benefits for learners and improve the effectiveness and overall efficiency of the education system.

The DfES Budget Statement in 2006 allocated a further £60 million (almost 90 million Euro) for 2006-07 and 2007-08 to enable the most disadvantaged children to have access to a computer and the internet at home.

Infrastructure Facts

A detailed picture of the national state of ICT infrastructure in schools is available from early 2006 following the large scale “Survey of LAN Infrastructure and ICT Equipment in Schools 2005” undertaken by Becta.

Further Reading:

UK country report on ICT in Education. European Schoolnet. 2005. http://insight.eun.orgcountryreports

EUN Roundtable blog
http://rountable.eun.org

Curriculum Online portal
http://www.curriculumonline.gov.uk

References:

Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children's services', DfES, 2005.
www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/docs/e-strategy.pdf

Harnessing technology delivery plan, Becta 2006
http://publications.becta.org.uk/
display.cfm?resID=28223&page=1835

Making a difference with technology for learning: evidence for school leaders. Becta, 2006.

http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=25961&page=1835

The Becta Review 2006. Becta 2006.
http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/
publications/documents/The_Becta_Review_2006.pdf

Curriculum online final report, Kitchen,Butt and Mackenzie, Becta 2006.

http://partners.becta.org.uk/page_documents/
research/curriculum_online/curriculum_online_final_report.pdf

Benchmarking Access and Use of ICT in European Schools’, Empirica,

2006.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/
eeurope/i2010/docs/studies/final_report_3.pdf

Moving towards e-learning in schools and Fe colleges, Amstrong, D. et al. (2004) Price WaterhouseCoopers.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR601.pdf

Survey of LAN Infrastructure and ICT Equipment in Schools 2005, Becta 2006.
http://partners.becta.org.uk/page_documents/
research/survey_of_lan_infrastructure0306v2.pdf