Education policy and the rationale for technology development in schools: political drivers - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 37

now difficult for teachers to find new knowledge and to be engaged in sharing and
further developing this with regard to technology for pedagogic practice.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of 2010, and concom-
itant economic recession, heralds a new era for technology in schools. This contem-
porary political climate of austerity within the context of a largely global economic
downturn requires schools to consider carefully their technology expenditure. This
is alongside the removal of foundation subject status, which Curriculum 2000 had
awarded to technology and made a statutory requirement of all subjects. The expert
panel reviewing the national curriculum recommend changing the status of tech-
nology to 'basic', which marks the end of a long fought for battle to see technology
prioritized in the eyes of teachers.
The ' Basic Curriculum ' describes the statutory requirements for curricular
provision . . . These are compulsory requirements, but schools are able to
determine for themselves the specific nature of this provision. The Secre-
tary of State is therefore not required to produce Programmes of Study and
Attainment Targets for subjects and topics in the Basic Curriculum.
(DfE 2011: 18 - bold in original)
This marks a very significant policy shift away from centrally prescribed technology enti-
tlement and consistent curriculum experience, to a technology curriculum that is locally
determined. This replaces consistency with diversity and possible disparity. How long
will it be before such inconsistencies herald a public outcry, like that of the Stevenson
report, which found the state of technology in UK schools was impoverished, owing to
a lack of investment and the lowered status of the subject? A cycle of lack of investment
and lack of equitable provision for learners could be expected to result from these deci-
sions. But then, in January 2012, the Education Secretary Michael Gove announced that
ICT would include more computer science and the DfE announced exactly a year later
that the subject will contribute to the English Baccalaureate (EBacc). As the first subject
to be added on to the original EBacc (2010), the DfE states that this demonstrates the
subjects importance to both education and the economy and that it will count as a sci-
ence in the EBacc from January 2014. This seems to suggest that the status of technology,
when reconfigured with more computer science, could regain its status.
Applications to practice
Technology practice in schools is influenced by the existence of national education policies
on technology. Anyone visiting leading UK schools between 1997 and 2010 would have
seen the application to practice that resulted from this period of innovation, development
and investment in technology (see Chapters 8 and 9, which report on such applications
to practice). The research reported in Chapters 8 and 9 (Leask and Preston 2010) brought
together the most innovative practitioners from primary, secondary and FE colleges with
the purpose of investigating how technology might be used in education both in the future
as well as recording effective practice over the past decade. Please refer to these chapters for
examples of practice that resulted from the policies discussed in this chapter.