Government must better help schools meet tech goals - report

Channel calls for more to be done to help schools embrace cloud and share best practice

More must be done to help schools address their immediate technology concerns, according to a new report, which claims too many institutions are left in the dark about tech.

European Electronique and Samsung teamed up with think tank The Education Foundation on its Technology in Education: A System View report, which urges the government to better support those in education to reap the benefits technology can bring.

According to the report, too many initiatives and other reports focus on helping schools plan for the future, meaning immediate tech concerns fall by the wayside.

"Too often technology reports focus on scenarios for the future that cannot be predicted and therefore leave school and education leaders, governors and budget holders [with] difficult decisions such as how [do we] deal with the present-day reality? What do we spend our money on? And how do we get appropriate technology into our classrooms that teachers can use to support their learning?," said Education Foundation co-founders Ian Fordham and Ty Goddard.

"We believe this report... is a lot more pragmatic and starts from the reality of what's needed now and in the next few years."

The report said so-called schools of the future are very much a reality already, meaning more needs to be done to support those on the front line right away.

It called for schools to share their knowledge on how to best use technology on a "what works" website and said school-inspection bodies should place more emphasis on the how new kit is used when making their evaluations.

"The use of technology to improve achievement must be recognised more prominently and systematically in inspection and accountability frameworks with clear guidance on what "good" and "outstanding" look like in practice," the report said.

It added that poor access to high-speed broadband was holding schools back, as was reluctance to move to the cloud.

"There are still major barriers to the adoption of technology in Britain's schools," it said. "Universal high-quality access to broadband in all schools would deliver significant benefit and if schools adopted cloud-based technology and made choices on devices based on flexibility and total cost of ownership, they would see considerable savings."