I’ve seen quite a lot of comments on Twitter about the lack of ‘learning’ focus in the UK’s announced EdTech Strategy.
Well, I finally got chance to look at the announcement today, some thoughts below:
- Productivity. One of my drivers in work is a dislike for waste and inefficiency. Therefore, I’m glad to see the focus on cutting teacher workloads. I’ve long argued that schools and (other public-purse funded) education institutions fail to drive enough efficiency in areas such as the below (all of which it would be nice to think are ‘in scope’):
- Shared resources – why does every teacher either build their own resources or buy from 3rd parties? If curriculum are comparable to exam standards then why not better sharing (and I do not mean for an individual teacher’s profit on sites like TES)?
- Manual marking – rather than switching to using automatic marking, question banks, adaptive content, etc.
- Expensive and wasteful school by school arrangements – for things like library licences, online learning environments, IT support, etc. The Teacher Vacancy Service has recognised the costs in recruitment, why not in other areas?
- 10million? Obviously this is a pretty minuscule drop in the ocean, especially given cuts to school budgets overall. Therefore, you suspect the approach needs to be to leverage existing tech better and spread practice from the likes of Microsoft education communities more widely. School funding cuts have gone too far but at the same time schools have not used tech for financial efficiency (as well as the kind of organisational productivity in point 1).
- Training/CPD for teachers. I recently commented on a popular education site saying the school sector desperately needs to move away from CPD=inset days to more continuous improvement. The problem is that teachers are timetabled to be in a set place at a set time teaching, with less flexibility for learning at work than many other professions. Sharing outcomes from the multitude of excellent informal learning that teachers undertake (Facebook groups, etc) that is not recognised widely currently would be a start. Sharing learning with other public sector bodies, such as the NHS and local councils would be even better. School’s are too often isolated in their communities as standalone institutions, failing to recognise that CPD and other areas is available via other companies’s CSR and other means.
- Tackling essay mills is obviously a worthy cause. Even better still would be better forms of assessment which were less reliant on essays in the first place.
- SEN supporting technology – this bit feels particularly where more cash might have been needed to make a real difference. That said, again, better sharing of practice would be a start – the promised ‘demonstrator schools and colleges’ might work as an approach to this in terms of developing communities and evidence based practice.
- The problem is too much tech? Anyone who goes to BETT (or is otherwise aware of the EdTech market) will probably wonder if we really need need more solutions in the identified areas such as “essay marking, formative assessment, parental engagement and timetabling technology”. What is really needed is the support in selection and implementation that JISC offers some of the target audience but BECTA used to for schools. BESA and LendED are mentioned in the statement for this kind of purpose but, of course, BESA and BECTA are quite different beasts.
Overall, no lack of good intent but a lot of work to do with little money. Consider, for scale, that assigned £10m versus the £146.2m JISC spent in 17/18.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 