Wednesday 24 February 2010

Are IT budgets ever enough?

The IT dream often hits reality somewhere. Lessons to be learnt... again. From


Head of Bristol Brunel Academy says much school IT spending is wasted

February 9, 2010 by Nicola Woolcock, Education Correspondent

An academy designed to be the first fully wireless school has been blighted by computer problems since being opened by Gordon Brown more than two years ago.
The head of the £24 million Bristol Brunel Academy — a beacon of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme — said that its wireless system had yet to work properly and teachers still did the register on paper because of problems with swipe cards. Other heads had told him fingerprint recognition systems were unreliable.

Mr Di-Finizio criticised the millions of pounds being spent on technology in schools, and suggested that there was a fixation with constantly updating classrooms with the latest gadgets.

Mr Di-Finizio said that there were pressures on schools to buy expensive equipment. “One could be led up the wrong path by IT experts. Is it worth having card-swiping and fingerprint detection systems in place, if the teacher still has to do the register?


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