Education policy and the rationale for technology development in schools: political drivers - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 23

develop 'ICT' provision (infrastructure, services and content); and a further £710 mil-
lion of expenditure was allocated between 2002 and 2004. A supporting national
programme of in-service training for teachers and school librarians was financed by
the National Lottery's New Opportunities Fund (NOF) (TTA 1998). From April 1999
to December 2003, £230 million from the New Opportunities Fund was made avail-
able across the UK (£180 million in England - equivalent to around £450 for each
teacher being trained). These programmes were the defining components of the gov-
ernment's national 'ICT' strategy for schools. Their implementation was the respon-
sibility of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE).
It is worth clarifying at this point what constitutes the difference between a political
initiative with ICT in education and educational ICT policy . It is only 'policy' that con-
tains a mandatory requirement; 'initiatives' do not contain the element of compulsion.
With initiatives there is the desire to enable change, through teachers responding to the
initiatives in the ways the government intended, but this is not a legislative require-
ment. For example, the NGfL and NOF initiatives provided ICT resourcing and training,
with the hope that teachers would, as a result, implement technology use in the class-
room, whereas the use of technology across all subjects became a statutory obligation
for all teachers, with the introduction of national curriculum orders for 'ICT' in 2000.
Launching the National Grid for Learning (NGfL)
In 1997 the Government's White Paper on 'Excellence in Schools', made recommen-
dations for technology based substantially on the work done by McKinsey (1997) and
Stevenson (1997). These were converted into clear objectives in the National Grid
for Learning documents (DfEE 1997a; DfEE 1998a, 1998b) and indicated the NGfL's
intended function: 'the delivery of ICT infrastructure, services, support and training'
(DfEE 1998a: 24); 'a framework for a learning community designed to raise standards
and improve Britain's competitiveness' (DfEE 1998b: 4). The far-reaching proposals
of the NGfL represented perhaps the most ambitious innovation envisaged for UK
schools. The emphasis was on ensuring that, at a national level, the ICT infrastructure
of every school was upgraded and managed. Specific proposals for teachers focused
on training: 'The Grid must be useful. It must lead to the improvement of the skills
and confidence of teachers' (DfEE 1997: 14).
In 1998 the task of coordinating content for the NGfL fell to Becta (British Educa-
tion and Communications Technology Agency), previously NCET (National Council
for Educational Technology). Becta were also set the task of evaluating the roll-out
of the government's national ICT strategy. This led to a series of important research
reports, which in the first phase encompassed the NGfL Pathfinder reports (Becta 2001-
2) and ImpaCT2 (Becta 2002), which examined the impact of ICT on pupil learning
and attainment. Clearly, 'this was a high-profile initiative the success of which could
contribute to perceptions of the efficacy of the Labour government' (Dawes 2001: 13).
Launching the New Opportunity Fund (NOF) ICT training initiative for teachers
Alongside addressing obsolete equipment, policy-makers also identified the need to
improve teacher competence (DfEE 1997). As the DfEE (1997: 8) stated, 'the prime