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27th April 2012

What does the closure of the DfEs Technology Policy Unit mean for schools?

With the Department for Education confirming that it will close the Technology Policy Unit (TPU) in May, it looks like there will be no team in Central Government with responsibility for how information and communications technology is taught in schools. 

This was surprising news. After all, it was only a few months ago, at BETT 2012, that the education minister Michael Gove was talking about the importance of ICT in schools. 

The TPU was the unit charged with developing the Government's policy over technology in schools. It was the last remnant of BECTA, the body responsible for promoting the effective use of technology in schools, which was scrapped in March last year.

So who now will conduct the much anticipated consultation into ICT and computer studies? And, crucially, what will it all mean for schools, who were eagerly anticipating some forthcoming guidance in order to plan, financially, for a potentially revamped curriculum?

To understand the importance of having a voice in Government representing technology in schools, we need only look at the benefits of learning about ICT in school; frankly a list of the harms it would do to not educate children in technology would be easier. But in a nutshell, understanding ICT provides a platform where ideas and theories can become either a reality or at the least more presentable. It provides the freedom to access information and a platform on which to develop ideas.

Recent research we commissioned supports this, showing that a school's investment in ICT resources has a massive impact on pupil performance. We found that those schools with a higher per pupil spend on ICT (roughly £123) saw better results across the board - over half (58%) of the pupils achieved at least five A* to C grade GCSEs.

So to recap, all signs suggest that the earlier learning about ICT begins the better. But much focus of late has been on how the curriculum is actually delivered. It's widely agreed that some form of learning should begin at primary school, enabling children, at the very least, to search for information and present it. This is certainly a critical skill that will no doubt help children later on in life.

The Government could look to extend the current ICT curriculum to put more emphasis on its practical application. There have already been calls for ICT to be integrated into other key subjects. In fact with school budgets still being cut and this putting extra pressure on class sizes technology could actually be used to support learning in key subjects such as Maths and modern languages.

So what next for the future of our children and UK plc if we don't address the problem of ICT in schools? Technology skills taught at an early age will be useful for the whole of their education and in adult and working life. If you take into consideration the emphasis placed on and the investment in technology skills by other countries such as the US and Korea and we will find it very difficult to compete. 

Philip White
Chief Executive