Whitehall reveals plans for home broadband

Channel players welcome government plans for universal home web access for pupils

The channel looks set to benefit from government plans to ensure every secondary school pupil has access to home broadband.
Speaking at last week’s British Education Training Technology (Bett) show, education minister Jim Knight said he saw “tough negotiations ahead” with big IT providers, such as Microsoft and BT, to help attain universal home internet access for six million pupils.
Knight also unveiled a £600,000 pilot scheme, run by education body Becta and delivered by PC World, RM, Dell and Intel, offering home PC access to all families in 50 UK schools.
Knight said: “We have to find a way to make access universal, or else it is not fair. More than a million
children and their families have no access to a computer in the home.”
Andy Bruen, homework programme manager for PC World Education, which is running a pilot with BT and Toshiba in five schools, told CRN: “We all have to look at making the price points as realistic as possible. The great thing about running schemes for schools is that we can engage with the local education authority, enabling lower price points.”
The Home Access Task Force, which Knight chairs, is due to report back in April.
Phil Hemmings, head of corporate affairs at RM, said: “We would expect to see a detailed policy statement in the spring, so we will know more then. The Home Computing Initiative went through PC World and smaller system builders, so I think it will be that tier of suppliers that will be in a position to put together a response to the policy.”
Knight also used Bett to reveal plans for every secondary school to have real-time reporting systems in place by 2010. This would allow parents to access information on their child’s progress wherever and whenever they want, he said.
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