pre and post Becta Pre ITTE symposium Warwick

What 25 participants; input by Vanessa Pittard and Jean Underwood; and working groups; theme was ‘to praise not to bury Becta’ but to move on ….

Becta role Becta built upon school improvement work and sought to understand change in terms of ‘horizontal and vertical layering’ ie change needed top down direction but to be responsive at local levels; Becta was part of that nested approach almost mediating between policy and schools. One aspect of its contribution lay in providing coherence eg understanding system interoperability or procurement that could help school make informed decisions and take advantage of economies of scale

Coherence? Time frameWhatFocus 2000 – 2004 Impact 2 study and seeing a relative gain when using ICT Demonstrating impact 2003 – 2006 Test best in depth study of 3 LA and 19 schools and moved to a maturity model e maturity not ICT makes a difference 2004 – 2007 Big programmes eg IWBs expansion; computers for teachers; broadband in schools; curriculum online beyond demonstrating impact and looking for insight 2007 – 2010 understanding learners personalising leaning and the impact in the classroom narrowing the gap; school improvements NEETs parental engagement extending impact seeking explanations understanding difference addressing problems

Our views personal loss about the demise of Becta, many of us had engaged with Becta (and its predecessors) over the entire course of our careers Becta was a loss to the education community both in this country and world wide, Becta had a legacy in terms of impact on schools and thinking about ICT, Becta had an institutional knowledge of ICT and about change there were some tensions within the role of Becta: more admired abroad than known of by practitioners? ; lacked independence; led by technology rather than a vision of the curriculum; needed to obsess about the GCSE outcomes measure which may underplay the value of ICT and misses the point of curriculum renewal?;

Becta functions There is a commitment by the DfE to continue key areas of Becta's work, albeit on much reduced staffing and budget including: policy development, liaison and support; maintenance and development of the Information Management Strategy framework and online tool, relationships with private and public sector suppliers and nationally negotiating favourable pricing; ICT Services Framework function; Development and maintenance of the online self- review framework evaluation tool for schools (with NAACE); research and analysis function and the Institute of Education (IOE)

Already great concern as to access to Becta research

The future Paradigm shift from coherent controlled entitlement to competitive and diverse; this is not just about this government or this minister The enduring contribution of ICT to transform classrooms and learning needs restating There is a continuing research agenda around eg personalising learning; what the competent learner brings to learning; parental engagement; understanding individual difference; risk taking online – should we have a more Scandinavian notion of risk taking where risk are discussed openly rather than swept under the table? Eg texting and social networking use of mobile devices in school? We may be facing retrenchment and quickly find ourselves with out of date technology if the focus on ICT goes We will very likely see greater diversity and some schools eg rural schools, unfashionable schools being left behind We should set out our own agenda for what is important in terms of ICT and our own vocabulary eg of digital literacy There is a vacuum but we should take seriously the idea that we can fill it by providing training and support for schools and long term relationships with practitioners rather than one off events of skills based training Research should engage with gap between potential and usage of ICT.. should be mixed methods in many cases (quantitative recognised as weak in the community)

Continuing interest in technology Gove at the recent Royal Society speech: In addition to the debate over what is taught, and the issue of who does the teaching, we also need to think about how the teaching takes place. So as well as reviewing our curriculum and strengthening our workforce, we need to look at the way the very technological innovations we are racing to keep up with can help us along the way. We need to change curricula, tests and teaching to keep up with technology, and technology itself is changing curricula, tests, and teaching. Interest in virtual schooling

To discuss What worked / did not work about Becta? Where do we want to be in our research our engagement with schools and how can we get there

My own view Common ground with new regime is critique of top down change Tension is in the view of the curriculum